Intro

The history library provides history tracking and navigation primitives for JavaScript applications that run in browsers and other stateful environments.

If you haven't yet, please take a second to read through the Installation guide to get the library installed and running on your system.

We provide 3 different methods for working with history, depending on your environment:

A "browser history" is for use in modern web browsers that support the HTML5 history API (see cross-browser compatibility)
A "hash history" is for use in web browsers where you want to store the location in the hash portion of the current URL to avoid sending it to the server when the page reloads
A "memory history" is used as a reference implementation that may be used in non-browser environments, like React Native or tests

The main bundle exports one method for each environment: createBrowserHistory for browsers, createHashHistory for using hash history in browsers, and createMemoryHistory for creating an in-memory history.

In addition to the main bundle, the library also includes history/browser and history/hash bundles that export singletons you can use to quickly get a history instance for the current document (web page).

Basic Usage

Basic usage looks like this:

// Create your own history instance.
import { createBrowserHistory } from "history";
let history = createBrowserHistory();

// ... or just import the browser history singleton instance.
import history from "history/browser";

// Alternatively, if you're using hash history import
// the hash history singleton instance.
// import history from 'history/hash';

// Get the current location.
let location = history.location;

// Listen for changes to the current location.
let unlisten = history.listen(({ location, action }) => {
  console.log(action, location.pathname, location.state);
});

// Use push to push a new entry onto the history stack.
history.push("/home", { some: "state" });

// Use replace to replace the current entry in the stack.
history.replace("/logged-in");

// Use back/forward to navigate one entry back or forward.
history.back();

// To stop listening, call the function returned from listen().
unlisten();

If you're using memory history you'll need to create your own history object before you can use it.

import { createMemoryHistory } from "history";
let history = createMemoryHistory();

If you're using browser or hash history with a window other than that of the current document (like an iframe), you'll need to create your own browser/hash history:

import { createBrowserHistory } from "history";
let history = createBrowserHistory({
  window: iframe.contentWindow,
});

Properties

Each history object has the following properties:

history.location - The current location (see below)
history.action - The current navigation action (see below)

Additionally, memory history provides history.index that tells you the current index in the history stack.

Listening

You can listen for changes to the current location using history.listen:

history.listen(({ action, location }) => {
  console.log(
    `The current URL is ${location.pathname}${location.search}${location.hash}`
  );
  console.log(`The last navigation action was ${action}`);
});

The location object implements a subset of the window.location interface, including:

The action is one of Action.Push, Action.Replace, or Action.Pop depending on how the user got to the current location.

Action.Push means one more entry was added to the history stack
Action.Replace means the current entry in the stack was replaced
Action.Pop means we went to some other location already in the stack

Cleaning up

When you attach a listener using history.listen, it returns a function that can be used to remove the listener, which can then be invoked in cleanup logic:

let unlisten = history.listen(myListener);

// Later, when you're done...
unlisten();

Utilities

The main history bundle also contains both createPath and parsePath methods that may be useful when working with URL paths.

let pathPieces = parsePath("/the/path?the=query#the-hash");
// pathPieces = {
//   pathname: '/the/path',
//   search: '?the=query',
//   hash: '#the-hash'
// }

let path = createPath(pathPieces);
// path = '/the/path?the=query#the-hash'