Routing
Nuxt file-system routing creates a route for every file in the pages/ directory.
One core feature of Nuxt is the file system router. Every Vue file inside the pages/
directory creates a corresponding URL (or route) that displays the contents of the file. By using dynamic imports for each page, Nuxt leverages code-splitting to ship the minimum amount of JavaScript for the requested route.
Pages
Nuxt routing is based on vue-router and generates the routes from every component created in the pages/
directory, based on their filename.
This file system routing uses naming conventions to create dynamic and nested routes:
| pages/
---| about.vue
---| index.vue
---| posts/
-----| [id].vue
Navigation
The <NuxtLink>
component links pages between them. It renders an <a>
tag with the href
attribute set to the route of the page. Once the application is hydrated, page transitions are performed in JavaScript by updating the browser URL. This prevents full-page refreshes and allows for animated transitions.
When a <NuxtLink>
enters the viewport on the client side, Nuxt will automatically prefetch components and payload (generated pages) of the linked pages ahead of time, resulting in faster navigation.
<template>
<header>
<nav>
<ul>
<li><NuxtLink to="/about">About</NuxtLink></li>
<li><NuxtLink to="/posts/1">Post 1</NuxtLink></li>
<li><NuxtLink to="/posts/2">Post 2</NuxtLink></li>
</ul>
</nav>
</header>
</template>
Route Parameters
The useRoute()
composable can be used in a <script setup>
block or a setup()
method of a Vue component to access the current route details.
<script setup lang="ts">
const route = useRoute()
// When accessing /posts/1, route.params.id will be 1
console.log(route.params.id)
</script>
Route Middleware
Nuxt provides a customizable route middleware framework you can use throughout your application, ideal for extracting code that you want to run before navigating to a particular route.
There are three kinds of route middleware:
- Anonymous (or inline) route middleware, which are defined directly in the pages where they are used.
- Named route middleware, which are placed in the
middleware/
directory and will be automatically loaded via asynchronous import when used on a page. (Note: The route middleware name is normalized to kebab-case, sosomeMiddleware
becomessome-middleware
.) - Global route middleware, which are placed in the
middleware/
directory (with a.global
suffix) and will be automatically run on every route change.
Example of an auth
middleware protecting the /dashboard
page:
export default defineNuxtRouteMiddleware((to, from) => {
// isAuthenticated() is an example method verifying if a user is authenticated
if (isAuthenticated() === false) {
return navigateTo('/login')
}
})
Route Validation
Nuxt offers route validation via the validate
property in definePageMeta()
in each page you wish to validate.
The validate
property accepts the route
as an argument. You can return a boolean value to determine whether or not this is a valid route to be rendered with this page. If you return false
, and another match can't be found, this will cause a 404 error. You can also directly return an object with statusCode
/statusMessage
to respond immediately with an error (other matches will not be checked).
If you have a more complex use case, then you can use anonymous route middleware instead.
<script setup lang="ts">
definePageMeta({
validate: async (route) => {
// Check if the id is made up of digits
return typeof route.params.id === 'string' && /^\d+$/.test(route.params.id)
}
})
</script>