Type Safety

TanStack Router is built to be as type-safe as possible within the limits of the TypeScript compiler and runtime. This means that it's not only written in TypeScript, but that it also fully infers the types it's provided and tenaciously pipes them through the entire routing experience.

Ultimately, this means that you write less types as a developer and have more confidence in your code as it evolves.

Routes are hierarchical, and so are their definitions. If you're using file-based routing, much of the type-safety is already taken care of for you.

If you're using the Route class directly, you'll need to be aware of how to ensure your routes are typed properly using the Route's getParentRoute option. This is because child routes need to be aware of all of their parent routes types. Without this, those precious search params you parsed out of your layout route 3 levels up would be lost to the JS void.

So, don't forget to pass the parent route to your child routes!

const parentRoute = createRoute({
  getParentRoute: () => parentRoute,
})

const parentRoute = createRoute({
  getParentRoute: () => parentRoute,
})

For the types of your router to work with top-level exports like Link, useNavigate, useParams, etc. they must permeate the type-script module boundary and be registered right into the library. To do this, we use declaration merging on the exported Register interface.

const router = createRouter({
  // ...
})

declare module '@tanstack/react-router' {
  interface Register {
    router: typeof router
  }
}

const router = createRouter({
  // ...
})

declare module '@tanstack/react-router' {
  interface Register {
    router: typeof router
  }
}

By registering your router with the module, you can now use the exported hooks, components, and utilities with your router's exact types.

Component context is a wonderful tool in React and other frameworks for providing dependencies to components. However, if that context is changing types as it moves throughout your component hierarchy, it becomes impossible for TypeScript to know how to infer those changes. To get around this, context-based hooks and components require that you give them a hint on how and where they are being used.

export const Route = createFileRoute('/posts')({
  component: PostsComponent,
})

function PostsComponent() {
  // Each route has type-safe versions of most of the built-in hooks from TanStack Router
  const params = Route.useParams()
  const search = Route.useSearch()

  // Some hooks require context from the *entire* router, not just the current route. To achieve type-safety here,
  // we must pass the `from` param to tell the hook our relative position in the route hierarchy.
  const navigate = useNavigate({ from: Route.fullPath })
  // ... etc
}

export const Route = createFileRoute('/posts')({
  component: PostsComponent,
})

function PostsComponent() {
  // Each route has type-safe versions of most of the built-in hooks from TanStack Router
  const params = Route.useParams()
  const search = Route.useSearch()

  // Some hooks require context from the *entire* router, not just the current route. To achieve type-safety here,
  // we must pass the `from` param to tell the hook our relative position in the route hierarchy.
  const navigate = useNavigate({ from: Route.fullPath })
  // ... etc
}

Every hook and component that requires a context hint will have a from param where you can pass the ID or path of the route you are rendering within.

🧠 Quick tip: If your component is code-split, you can use the getRouteApi function to avoid having to pass in the Route.fullPath to get access to the typed useParams() and useSearch() hooks.

The from property is optional, which means if you don't pass it, you'll get the router's best guess on what types will be available. Usually, that means you'll get a union of all of the types of all of the routes in the router.

It's technically possible to pass a from that satisfies TypeScript, but may not match the actual route you are rendering within at runtime. In this case, each hook and component that supports from will detect if your expectations don't match the actual route you are rendering within, and will throw a runtime error.

If you are rendering a component that is shared across multiple routes, or you are rendering a component that is not within a route, you can pass strict: false instead of a from option. This will not only silence the runtime error, but will also give you relaxed, but accurate types for the potential hook you are calling. A good example of this is calling useSearch from a shared component:

function MyComponent() {
  const search = useSearch({ strict: false })
}

function MyComponent() {
  const search = useSearch({ strict: false })
}

In this case, the search variable will be typed as a union of all possible search params from all routes in the router.

Router context is so extremely useful as it's the ultimate hierarchical dependency injection. You can supply context to the router and to each and every route it renders. As you build up this context, TanStack Router will merge it down with the hierarchy of routes, so that each route has access to the context of all of its parents.

The createRootRouteWithContext factory creates a new router with the instantiated type, which then creates a requirement for you to fulfill the same type contract to your router, and will also ensure that your context is properly typed throughout the entire route tree.

const rootRoute = createRootRouteWithContext<{ whateverYouWant: true }>()({
  component: App,
})

const routeTree = rootRoute.addChildren([
  // ... all child routes will have access to `whateverYouWant` in their context
])

const router = createRouter({
  routeTree,
  context: {
    // This will be required to be passed now
    whateverYouWant: true,
  },
})

const rootRoute = createRootRouteWithContext<{ whateverYouWant: true }>()({
  component: App,
})

const routeTree = rootRoute.addChildren([
  // ... all child routes will have access to `whateverYouWant` in their context
])

const router = createRouter({
  routeTree,
  context: {
    // This will be required to be passed now
    whateverYouWant: true,
  },
})

As your application scales, TypeScript check times will naturally increase. There are a few things to keep in mind when your application scales to keep your TS check times down.

Consider the following usage of Link

<Link to=".." search={{ page: 0 }} />
<Link to="." search={{ page: 0 }} />
<Link search={{ page: 0 }} />

<Link to=".." search={{ page: 0 }} />
<Link to="." search={{ page: 0 }} />
<Link search={{ page: 0 }} />

These examples are bad for TS performance. That's because search resolves to a union of all search params for all routes and TS has to check whatever you pass to the search prop against this potentially big union. As your application grows, this check time will increase linearly to number of routes and search params. We have done our best to optimise for this case (TypeScript will typically do this work once and cache it) but the initial check against this large union is expensive. This also applies to params and other API's such as useSearch, useParams, useNavigate etc

Instead you should try to narrow to relevant routes with from or to

<Link from={Route.fullPath} to=".." search={{page: 0}} />
<Link from="/posts" to=".." search={{page: 0}} />

<Link from={Route.fullPath} to=".." search={{page: 0}} />
<Link from="/posts" to=".." search={{page: 0}} />

Remember you can always pass a union to to or from to narrow the routes you're interested in.

const from: '/posts/$postId/deep' | '/posts/' = '/posts/'
<Link from={from} to='..' />

const from: '/posts/$postId/deep' | '/posts/' = '/posts/'
<Link from={from} to='..' />

You can also pass branches to from to only resolve search or params to be from any descendants of that branch

const from = '/posts'
<Link from={from} to='..' />

const from = '/posts'
<Link from={from} to='..' />

/posts could be a branch with many descendants which share the same search or params

It's tyipcal of routes to have params search, loaders or context that can even reference external dependencies which are also heavy on TS inference. For such applications, using objects for creating the route tree can be more performant than tuples.

createChildren also can accept an object. For large route trees with complex routes and external libraries, objects can be much faster for TS to type check as opposed to large tuples. The performance gains depend on your project, what external dependencies you have and how the types for those libraries are written

const routeTree = rootRoute.addChildren({
  postsRoute: postsRoute.addChildren({ postRoute, postsIndexRoute }),
  indexRoute,
})

const routeTree = rootRoute.addChildren({
  postsRoute: postsRoute.addChildren({ postRoute, postsIndexRoute }),
  indexRoute,
})

Note this syntax is more verbose but has better TS performance. With file based routing, the route tree is generated for you so a verbose route tree is not a concern

It's common you might want to re-use types exposed. For example you might be tempted to use LinkProps like so

const props: LinkProps = {
  to: '/posts/',
}

return (
  <Link {...props}>
)

const props: LinkProps = {
  to: '/posts/',
}

return (
  <Link {...props}>
)

This is VERY bad for TS Performance. The problem here is LinkProps has no type arguments and is therefore an extremely large type. It includes search which is a union of all search params, it contains params which is a union of all params. When merging this object with Link it will do a structural comparison of this huge type.

Instead you can use as const satisfies to infer a precise type and not LinkProps directly to avoid the huge check

const props = {
  to: '/posts/',
} as const satisfies LinkProps

return (
  <Link {...props}>
)

const props = {
  to: '/posts/',
} as const satisfies LinkProps

return (
  <Link {...props}>
)

As props is not of type LinkProps and therefore this check is cheaper because the type is much more precise. You can also improve type checking further by narrowing LinkProps

const props = {
  to: '/posts/',
} as const satisfies LinkProps<RegisteredRouter, string '/posts/'>

return (
  <Link {...props}>
)

const props = {
  to: '/posts/',
} as const satisfies LinkProps<RegisteredRouter, string '/posts/'>

return (
  <Link {...props}>
)

This is even faster as we're checking against the narrowed LinkProps type.

You can also use this to narrow the type of LinkProps to a specific type to be used as a prop or parameter to a function

export const myLinkProps = [
  {
    to: '/posts',
  },
  {
    to: '/posts/$postId',
    params: { postId: 'postId' },
  },
] as const satisfies ReadonlyArray<LinkProps>

export type MyLinkProps = (typeof myLinkProps)[number]

const MyComponent = (props: { linkProps: MyLinkProps }) => {
  return <Link {...props.linkProps} />
}

export const myLinkProps = [
  {
    to: '/posts',
  },
  {
    to: '/posts/$postId',
    params: { postId: 'postId' },
  },
] as const satisfies ReadonlyArray<LinkProps>

export type MyLinkProps = (typeof myLinkProps)[number]

const MyComponent = (props: { linkProps: MyLinkProps }) => {
  return <Link {...props.linkProps} />
}

This is faster than using LinkProps directly in a component because MyLinkProps is a much more precise type

Another solution is not to use LinkProps and to provide inversion of control to render a Link component narrowed to a specific route. Render props are a good method of inverting control to the user of a component

export interface MyComponentProps {
  readonly renderLink: () => React.ReactNode
}

const MyComponent = (props: MyComponentProps) => {
  return <div>{props.renderLink()}</div>
}

const Page = () => {
  return <MyComponent renderLink={() => <Link to="/absolute" />} />
}

export interface MyComponentProps {
  readonly renderLink: () => React.ReactNode
}

const MyComponent = (props: MyComponentProps) => {
  return <div>{props.renderLink()}</div>
}

const Page = () => {
  return <MyComponent renderLink={() => <Link to="/absolute" />} />
}

This particular example is very fast as we've inverted control of where we're navigating to the user of the component. The Link is narrowed to the exact route we want to navigate to