I am having difficulties with react router relative paths. The base path disappears from the Location bar

Question

I have a webapp that is deployed where the root is in the path of /exist/apps/my-app/. I have the following code implemented for the App.js:

import React from 'react';
import Navbar from 'react-bootstrap/Navbar';
import Nav from 'react-bootstrap/Nav';
import {
    BrowserRouter as Router,
    Switch,
    Route,
    Link
} from "react-router-dom";
import 'bootstrap/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css';
import './App.css';


function App() {
  return (
        <Router basename={process.env.PUBLIC_URL}>
            <Navbar bg="dark" variant="dark" fixed="top">
                <Navbar.Brand href="/"><img alt="" src="https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/u/2393489?s=200&v=4" weign="40" height="40"/> My React Application</Navbar.Brand>
                <Nav className="mr-auto">
                    <Link to="/" className="nav-link">Home</Link>
                    <Link to="/features" className="nav-link">Features</Link>
                    <Link to="/pricing" className="nav-link">Pricing</Link>
                </Nav>
            </Navbar>
            <div className="full">
                <Switch>
                    <Route path="/features">
                        <h1>Features</h1>
                    </Route>
                    <Route path="/pricing">
                        <h1>Pricing</h1>
                    </Route>
                    <Route path="/">
                        <h1>Home</h1>
                    </Route>
                </Switch>
            </div>
        </Router>
  );
}

export default App;

Clicking through the nav links navigates to the proper routing, but /exist/apps/my-app disappears from the URL displayed. How do I keep the missing part of the URL in the Location bar?

Answer 1

process.env.PUBLIC_URL contained a period only.

I found two solutions.

First was to hard code basename={'/exist/apps/my-app'}.

The second and better approach was to eliminate basename all together and change BrowserRouter to HashRouter.

I eventually found the second approach and has the added benefit of being able to bookmark URLs containing a Route.

Checkout https://github.com/lcahlander/my-app for the sample eXist-db web application.