Creating a NavigationStrategy in Aurelia: Streamlining Your Server-Side Data
As a software developer working with the Aurelia framework, you may have encountered the challenge of managing complex navigation menus that rely on server-side data. Traditionally, this would require you to manually configure your router and build the navigation structure on the client-side. However, there's a more efficient way to tackle this problem: by creating a NavigationStrategy in Aurelia.
In this article, we'll dive into the details of implementing a NavigationStrategy that leverages server-side data to streamline your routing and navigation setup. Let's get started!
The Problem: Manual Configuration and Nested Navigation
When you're using server-side data to build your navigation menu, it can be a tedious and error-prone process to manually configure your Aurelia router and map the navigation structure. This becomes especially challenging when dealing with nested navigation, where you have child routes that need to be dynamically configured based on the parent route's settings.
Imagine a scenario where your server-side data looks like this:
{
"routes": [
{
"route": "/",
"moduleId": "views/home",
"settings": {
"childRoutes": [
{
"route": "about",
"moduleId": "views/about"
},
{
"route": "contact",
"moduleId": "views/contact"
}
]
}
},
{
"route": "products",
"moduleId": "views/products",
"settings": {
"childRoutes": [
{
"route": ":id",
"moduleId": "views/product-detail"
}
]
}
}
]
}
In the traditional approach, you would need to manually configure your Aurelia router like this:
async configureRouter(config, router) {
const resp = await http.fetch("api/menu-plugin-uri");
const json = await resp.json();
// Map the top-level routes
config.map(json.routes);
// Map the child routes
config.mapUnknownRoutes((instruction) => {
const parentConfig = router.parent.currentInstruction.config;
config.map(parentConfig.childRoutes);
});
}
This can become quite complex, especially when dealing with deeper levels of nested navigation. You would need to handle the child route configurations separately, which can lead to boilerplate code and potential maintenance issues.
The Solution: NavigationStrategy in Aurelia
To address this problem, Aurelia provides a powerful feature called the NavigationStrategy. This strategy allows you to encapsulate the logic for configuring your router's navigation structure, making it more modular and easier to maintain.
Let's dive into the steps of creating a NavigationStrategy in Aurelia:
- Define the Navigation Configuration
First, let's create the JSON configuration that we'll use to generate the navigation structure:
{
"routes": [
{
"route": "\"...\"",
"moduleId": "\"...\"",
"settings": {
"childRoutes": [
{
"route": "\"...\"",
"moduleId": "\"...\""
}
]
}
}
]
}
- Implement the NavigationStrategy
Next, we'll create a class that extends the NavigationStrategy
base class provided by Aurelia. This class will handle the logic for configuring the router based on the server-side data.
import { NavigationStrategy } from 'aurelia-router';
import { HttpClient } from 'aurelia-fetch-client';
export class ServerNavigationStrategy extends NavigationStrategy {
constructor(@Inject(HttpClient) private http) {
super();
}
async process(navigationInstruction, next) {
const resp = await this.http.fetch("api/menu-plugin-uri");
const json = await resp.json();
navigationInstruction.config.map(json.routes);
return next();
}
}
In the process
method, we fetch the navigation configuration from the server, parse the JSON, and then map the routes to the router configuration using the navigationInstruction.config.map()
method.
- Register the NavigationStrategy
Now, we need to register the ServerNavigationStrategy
with the Aurelia router. This can be done in the main.js
file (or your equivalent entry point):
import { ServerNavigationStrategy } from './ServerNavigationStrategy';
export function configure(aurelia) {
aurelia.use
.standardConfiguration()
.developmentLogging()
.router({
navigationStrategy: ServerNavigationStrategy
});
aurelia.start().then(() => aurelia.setRoot('app'));
}
By setting the navigationStrategy
property on the router configuration, Aurelia will use the ServerNavigationStrategy
to handle the navigation setup.
- Leverage the Navigation Configuration in Your Views
With the NavigationStrategy in place, you can now access the navigation configuration in your view models and views. For example, in your root view model's configureRouter
method, you can do the following:
async configureRouter(config, router) {
const resp = await http.fetch("api/menu-plugin-uri");
const json = await resp.json();
config.map(json.routes);
}
In your child view models, you can also access the parent route's configuration:
configureRouter(config, router) {
const parentConfig = router.parent.currentInstruction.config;
config.map(parentConfig.childRoutes);
}
This allows you to dynamically configure the child routes based on the parent route's settings, making it easier to manage nested navigation.
Benefits of Using a NavigationStrategy
By implementing a NavigationStrategy in Aurelia, you can enjoy several benefits:
-
Separation of Concerns: The NavigationStrategy encapsulates the logic for configuring the router, separating it from the rest of your application code. This makes your code more modular and easier to maintain.
-
Flexibility: The NavigationStrategy allows you to decouple the navigation configuration from your application, making it easier to update or change the navigation structure without modifying your core application code.
-
Reusability: You can create multiple NavigationStrategy implementations, each tailored to different scenarios (e.g., server-side data, static configuration, etc.). This promotes code reuse and maintainability.
-
Testability: By isolating the navigation configuration logic in a separate class, you can more easily write unit tests for your NavigationStrategy, ensuring its correctness and reliability.
-
Improved Developer Experience: With the NavigationStrategy in place, your Aurelia application's routing and navigation setup becomes more streamlined and easier to manage, especially when dealing with complex, server-side-driven navigation structures.
Conclusion
In this article, we explored how to create a NavigationStrategy in Aurelia to streamline the process of configuring your router and navigation structure when working with server-side data. By encapsulating the logic for generating the navigation configuration, you can simplify your application code, improve maintainability, and enjoy a better overall developer experience.
Remember, the NavigationStrategy is a powerful feature in Aurelia that can be leveraged in a variety of scenarios, not just when using server-side data. Consider exploring other use cases where a NavigationStrategy could benefit your Aurelia application.
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