Safe NextJS Navigation

Static type and runtime validation for navigating routes in NextJS App Router with Zod schemas.

Static and runtime validation of routes, route params and query string parameters on client and server components.

📦 Install

Safe NextJS Navigation is available as a package on NPM, install with your favorite package manager:

npm install next-safe-navigation

⚡ Quick start

Tip

Enable experimental.typedRoutes in next.config.js for a better and safer experience with autocomplete when defining your routes

Declare your application routes and parameters in a single place

// src/shared/navigation.ts
import { createNavigationConfig } from "next-safe-navigation";
import { z } from "zod";

export const { routes, useSafeParams, useSafeSearchParams } = createNavigationConfig(
  (defineRoute) => ({
    home: defineRoute('/'),
    customers: defineRoute('/customers', {
      search: z
        .object({
          query: z.string().default(''),
          page: z.coerce.number().default(1),
        })
        .default({ query: '', page: 1 }),
    }),
    invoice: defineRoute('/invoices/[invoiceId]', {
      params: z.object({
        invoiceId: z.string(),
      }),
    }),
    shop: defineRoute('/support/[...tickets]', {
      params: z.object({
        tickets: z.array(z.string()),
      }),
    }),
    shop: defineRoute('/shop/[[...slug]]', {
      params: z.object({
        // ⚠️ Remember to always set your optional catch-all segments
        // as optional values, or add a default value to them
        slug: z.array(z.string()).optional(),
      }),
    }),
  }),
);

Runtime validation for React Server Components (RSC)

Important

The output of a Zod schema might not be the same as its input, since schemas can transform the values during parsing (e.g.: z.coerce.number()), especially when dealing with URLSearchParams where all values are strings and you might want to convert params to different types. For this reason, this package does not expose types to infer params or searchParams from your declared routes to be used in page props:

interface CustomersPageProps {
  // ❌ Do not declare your params | searchParam types
  searchParams?: ReturnType<typeof routes.customers.$parseSearchParams>
}

Instead, it is strongly advised that you parse the params in your server components to have runtime validated and accurate type information for the values in your app.

// src/app/customers/page.tsx
import { routes } from "@/shared/navigation";

interface CustomersPageProps {
  // ✅ Never assume the types of your params before validation
  searchParams?: unknown
}

export default async function CustomersPage({ searchParams }: CustomersPageProps) {
  const { query, page } = routes.customers.$parseSearchParams(searchParams);

  const customers = await fetchCustomers({ query, page });

  return (
    <main>
      <input name="query" type="search" defaultValue={query} />

      <Customers data={customers} />
    </main>
  )
};

/* --------------------------------- */

// src/app/invoices/[invoiceId]/page.tsx
import { routes } from "@/shared/navigation";

interface InvoicePageProps {
  // ✅ Never assume the types of your params before validation
  params?: unknown
}

export default async function InvoicePage({ params }: InvoicePageProps) {
  const { invoiceId } = routes.invoice.$parseParams(params);

  const invoice = await fetchInvoice(invoiceId);

  return (
    <main>
      <Invoice data={customers} />
    </main>
  )
};

Runtime validation for Client Components

// src/app/customers/page.tsx
'use client';

import { useSafeSearchParams } from "@/shared/navigation";

export default function CustomersPage() {
  const { query, page } = useSafeSearchParams('customers');

  const customers = useSuspenseQuery({
    queryKey: ['customers', { query, page }],
    queryFn: () => fetchCustomers({ query, page}),
  });

  return (
    <main>
      <input name="query" type="search" defaultValue={query} />

      <Customers data={customers.data} />
    </main>
  )
};

/* --------------------------------- */

// src/app/invoices/[invoiceId]/page.tsx
'use client';

import { useSafeParams } from "@/shared/navigation";

export default function InvoicePage() {
  const { invoiceId } = useSafeParams('invoice');

  const invoice = useSuspenseQuery({
    queryKey: ['invoices', { invoiceId }],
    queryFn: () => fetchInvoice(invoiceId),
  });

  return (
    <main>
      <Invoice data={invoice.data} />
    </main>
  )
};

Use throughout your codebase as the single source for navigating between routes:

import { routes } from "@/shared/navigation";

export function Header() {
  return (
    <nav>
      <Link href={routes.home()}>Home</Link>
      <Link href={routes.customers()}>Customers</Link>
    </nav>
  )
};

export function CustomerInvoices({ invoices }) {
  return (
    <ul>
      {invoices.map(invoice => (
        <li key={invoice.id}>
          <Link href={routes.invoice({ invoiceId: invoice.id })}>
            View invoice
          </Link>
        </li>
      ))}
    </ul>
  )
};