[javascript] React-Router External link

Since I'm using react-router to handle my routes in a react app, I'm curious if there is a way to redirect to an external resource.

Say someone hits:

example.com/privacy-policy

I would like it to redirect to:

example.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/123456789-Privacy-Policies

I'm finding exactly zero help in avoiding writing it in plain JS at my index.html loading with something like:

if ( window.location.path === "privacy-policy" ){
  window.location = "example.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/123456789-Privacy-Policies"
}

I was able to achieve a redirect in react-router-dom using the following

<Route exact path="/" component={() => <Redirect to={{ pathname: '/YourRoute' }} />} />

For my case, I was looking for a way to redirect users whenever they visit the root URL http://myapp.com to somewhere else within the app http://myapp.com/newplace. so the above helped.

To expand on Alan's answer, you can create a <Route/> that redirects all <Link/>'s with "to" attributes containing 'http:' or 'https:' to the correct external resource.

Below is a working example of this which can be placed directly into your <Router>.

<Route path={['/http:', '/https:']} component={props => {
  window.location.replace(props.location.pathname.substr(1)) // substr(1) removes the preceding '/'
  return null
}}/>

With Link component of react-router you can do that. In the "to" prop you can specify 3 types of data:

• a string: A string representation of the Link location, created by concatenating the location’s pathname, search, and hash properties.
• an object: An object that can have any of the following properties:
  • pathname: A string representing the path to link to.
  • search: A string representation of query parameters.
  • hash: A hash to put in the URL, e.g. #a-hash.
  • state: State to persist to the location.
• a function: A function to which current location is passed as an argument and which should return location representation as a string or as an object

For your example (external link):

https://example.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/123456789-Privacy-Policies

You can do the following:

<Link to={{ pathname: "https://example.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/123456789-Privacy-Policies" }} target="_blank" />

You can also pass props you’d like to be on the such as a title, id, className, etc.

You can now link to an external site using React Link by providing an object to to with the pathname key:

<Link to={ { pathname: '//example.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/123456789-Privacy-Policies' } } >

If you find that you need to use JS to generate the link in a callback, you can use window.location.replace() or window.location.assign().

Over using window.location.replace(), as other good answers suggest, try using window.location.assign().

window.location.replace() will replace the location history without preserving the current page.

window.location.assign() will transition to the url specified, but will save the previous page in the browser history, allowing proper back-button functionality.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Location/replace https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Location/assign

Also, if you are using a window.location = url method as mentioned in other answers, I highly suggest switching to window.location.href = url. There is a heavy argument about it, where many users seem to adamantly want to revert the newer object type window.location to its original implementation as string merely because they can (and they egregiously attack anyone who says otherwise), but you could theoretically interrupt other library functionality accessing the window.location object.

Check out this convo. It's terrible. Javascript: Setting location.href versus location

Here's a one-liner for using React Router to redirect to an external link:

<Route path='/privacy-policy' component={() => { 
     window.location.href = 'https://example.com/1234'; 
     return null;
}}/>

It uses React pure component concept to reduce the component's code to a single function that, instead of rendering anything, redirects browser to an external URL.

Works both on React Router 3 and 4.

FOR V3, although it may work for V4. Going off of Eric's answer, I needed to do a little more, like handle local development where 'http' is not present on the url. I'm also redirecting to another application on the same server.

Added to router file:

import RedirectOnServer from './components/RedirectOnServer';

       <Route path="/somelocalpath"
          component={RedirectOnServer}
          target="/someexternaltargetstring like cnn.com"
        />

And the Component:

import React, { Component } from "react";

export class RedirectOnServer extends Component {

  constructor(props) {
    super();
    //if the prefix is http or https, we add nothing
    let prefix = window.location.host.startsWith("http") ? "" : "http://";
    //using host here, as I'm redirecting to another location on the same host
    this.target = prefix + window.location.host + props.route.target;
  }
  componentDidMount() {
    window.location.replace(this.target);
  }
  render(){
    return (
      <div>
        <br />
        <span>Redirecting to {this.target}</span>
      </div>
    );
  }
}

export default RedirectOnServer;

I'm facing same issue. Solved it using by http:// or https:// in react js.

Like as: <a target="_blank" href="http://www.example.com/" title="example">See detail</a>

Using React with Typescript you get an error as the function must return a react element, not void. So I did it this way using the Route render method (and using React router v4):

redirectToHomePage = (): null => {
    window.location.reload();
    return null;
  };    
<Route exact path={'/'} render={this.redirectToHomePage} />

Where you could instead also use window.location.assign(), window.location.replace() etc

It doesn't need to request react router. This action can be done natively and it is provided by the browser.

just use window.location

class RedirectPage extends React.Component {
  componentDidMount(){
    window.location.replace('https://www.google.com')
  }
}

also, if you want to open it in a new tab:

window.open('https://www.google.com', '_blank');

There is no need to use <Link /> component from react-router.

If you want to go to external link use an anchor tag.

<a target="_blank" href="https://meetflo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/230425728-Privacy-Policies">Policies</a>

If you are using server side rending, you can use StaticRouter. With your context as props and then adding <Redirect path="/somewhere" /> component in your app. The idea is everytime react-router matches a redirect component it will add something into the context you passed into the static router to let you know your path matches a redirect component. now that you know you hit a redirect you just need to check if thats the redirect you are looking for. then just redirect through the server. ctx.redirect('https://example/com').

I don't think React-Router provides this support. The documentation mentions

A < Redirect > sets up a redirect to another route in your application to maintain old URLs.

You could try using something like React-Redirect instead

I had luck with this:

  <Route
    path="/example"
    component={() => {
    global.window && (global.window.location.href = 'https://example.com');
    return null;
    }}
/>

Using some of the info here, I came up with the following component which you can use within your route declarations. It's compatible with React Router v4.

It's using typescript, but should be fairly straight-forward to convert to native javascript:

interface Props {
  exact?: boolean;
  link: string;
  path: string;
  sensitive?: boolean;
  strict?: boolean;
}

const ExternalRedirect: React.FC<Props> = (props: Props) => {
  const { link, ...routeProps } = props;

  return (
    <Route
      {...routeProps}
      render={() => {
        window.location.replace(props.link);
        return null;
      }}
    />
  );
};

And use with:

<ExternalRedirect
  exact={true}
  path={'/privacy-policy'}
  link={'https://example.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/123456789-Privacy-Policies'}
/>