Routing

One core feature of Nuxt is the file system router. Every Vue file inside the pages/ directory creates a corresponding URL (or route) that displays the contents of the file. By using dynamic imports for each page, Nuxt leverages code-splitting to ship the minimum amount of JavaScript for the requested route.

Pages

Nuxt routing is based on vue-router and generates the routes from every component created in the pages/ directory, based on their filename.

This file system routing uses naming conventions to create dynamic and nested routes:

| pages/
---| about.vue
---| index.vue
---| posts/
-----| [id].vue

Navigation

The <NuxtLink> component links pages between them. It renders an <a> tag with the href attribute set to the route of the page. Once the application is hydrated, page transitions are performed in JavaScript by updating the browser URL. This prevents full-page refreshes and allows for animated transitions.

When a <NuxtLink> enters the viewport on the client side, Nuxt will automatically prefetch components and payload (generated pages) of the linked pages ahead of time, resulting in faster navigation.

<template>
  <header>
    <nav>
      <ul>
        <li><NuxtLink to="/about">About</NuxtLink></li>
        <li><NuxtLink to="/posts/1">Post 1</NuxtLink></li>
        <li><NuxtLink to="/posts/2">Post 2</NuxtLink></li>
      </ul>
    </nav>
  </header>
</template>

Route Parameters

The useRoute() composable can be used in a <script setup> block or a setup() method of a Vue component to access the current route details.

<script setup lang="ts">
const route = useRoute()

// When accessing /posts/1, route.params.id will be 1
console.log(route.params.id)
</script>

Route Middleware

Nuxt provides a customizable route middleware framework you can use throughout your application, ideal for extracting code that you want to run before navigating to a particular route.

There are three kinds of route middleware:

1. Anonymous (or inline) route middleware, which are defined directly in the pages where they are used.
2. Named route middleware, which are placed in the middleware/ directory and will be automatically loaded via asynchronous import when used on a page. (Note: The route middleware name is normalized to kebab-case, so someMiddleware becomes some-middleware.)
3. Global route middleware, which are placed in the middleware/ directory (with a .global suffix) and will be automatically run on every route change.

Example of an auth middleware protecting the /dashboard page:

export default defineNuxtRouteMiddleware((to, from) => {
  // isAuthenticated() is an example method verifying if a user is authenticated
  if (isAuthenticated() === false) {
    return navigateTo('/login')
  }
})

Route Validation

Nuxt offers route validation via the validate property in definePageMeta() in each page you wish to validate.

The validate property accepts the route as an argument. You can return a boolean value to determine whether or not this is a valid route to be rendered with this page. If you return false, and another match can't be found, this will cause a 404 error. You can also directly return an object with statusCode/statusMessage to respond immediately with an error (other matches will not be checked).

If you have a more complex use case, then you can use anonymous route middleware instead.

<script setup lang="ts">
definePageMeta({
  validate: async (route) => {
    // Check if the id is made up of digits
    return /^\d+$/.test(route.params.id)
  }
})
</script>