Frequently Asked Questions

Welcome to the TanStack Router FAQ! Here you'll find answers to common questions about the TanStack Router. If you have a question that isn't answered here, please feel free to ask in the TanStack Discord.

To answer this question, it's important to view the other options in the space. There are many alternatives to choose from, but only a couple that are widely adopted and actively maintained:

• Next.js - Widely regarded as the leading framework for starting new React projects. Its design focuses on performance, development workflows, and cutting-edge technology. The framework's APIs and abstractions, while powerful, can sometimes present as non-standard. Rapid growth and industry adoption have resulted in a feature-rich experience, sometimes leading to a steeper learning curve and increased overhead.
• Remix / React Router - Based on the historically successful React Router, Remix delivers a powerful developer and user experience. Its API and architectural vision are firmly rooted in web standards such as Request/Response, with an emphasis on adaptability across various JavaScript environments. Many of its APIs and abstractions are well-designed and have influenced more than a few of TanStack Router's APIs. However, its rigid design, the integration of type safety as an add-on, and sometimes strict adherence to platform APIs can present limitations for some developers.

These frameworks and routers have their strengths, but they also come with trade-offs that may not align with every project's needs. TanStack Router aims to strike a balance by offering routing APIs designed to improve the developer experience without sacrificing flexibility or performance.

TanStack Router itself is not a "framework" in the traditional sense, since it doesn't address a few other common full-stack concerns. However, TanStack Router has been designed to be upgradable to a full-stack framework when used in conjunction with other tools that address bundling, deployments, and server-side-specific functionality. This is why we are currently developing TanStack Start, a full-stack framework that is built on top of TanStack Router and Vite. For a deeper dive on the history of TanStack Router, feel free to read TanStack Router's History.

Yes! Although the route tree file (i.e., routeTree.gen.ts) is generated by TanStack Router, it is essentially part of your application’s runtime, not a build artifact. The route tree file is a critical part of your application’s source code, and it is used by TanStack Router to build your application’s routes at runtime.

You should commit this file into git so that other developers can use it to build your application.

No, the root route is always rendered as it is the entry point of your application.

If you need to conditionally render a route's component, this usually means that the page content needs to be different based on some condition (e.g. user authentication). For this use case, you should use a Layout Route or a Pathless Layout Route to conditionally render the content.

You can restrict access to these routes using a conditional check in the beforeLoad function of the route.

// src/routes/_pathless-layout.tsx
import { createFileRoute, Outlet } from '@tanstack/react-router'
import { isAuthenticated } from '../utils/auth'

export const Route = createFileRoute('/_pathless-layout', {
  beforeLoad: async () => {
    // Check if the user is authenticated
    const authed = await isAuthenticated()
    if (!authed) {
      // Redirect the user to the login page
      return '/login'
    }
  },
  component: PathlessLayoutRouteComponent,
  // ...
})

function PathlessLayoutRouteComponent() {
  return (
    <div>
      <h1>You are authed</h1>
      <Outlet />
    </div>
  )
}

// src/routes/_pathless-layout.tsx
import { createFileRoute, Outlet } from '@tanstack/react-router'
import { isAuthenticated } from '../utils/auth'

export const Route = createFileRoute('/_pathless-layout', {
  beforeLoad: async () => {
    // Check if the user is authenticated
    const authed = await isAuthenticated()
    if (!authed) {
      // Redirect the user to the login page
      return '/login'
    }
  },
  component: PathlessLayoutRouteComponent,
  // ...
})

function PathlessLayoutRouteComponent() {
  return (
    <div>
      <h1>You are authed</h1>
      <Outlet />
    </div>
  )
}