auto_route 1.0.0-beta.7

AutoRoute is a declarative routing solution, where everything needed for navigation is automatically generated for you.

---

• Introduction
• Installation
• Setup and Usage
• Generated routes
• Navigation
• Passing Arguments
• Working with Paths
• Nested Routes

Introduction

What is AutoRoute?

It’s a Flutter navigation package, it allows for strongly-typed arguments passing, effortless deep-linking and it uses code generation to simplify routes setup, with that being said it requires a minimal amount of code to generate everything needed for navigation inside of your App.

Why AutoRoute?

If your App requires deep-linking or guarded routes or just a clean routing setup you'll need to use named/generated routes and you’ll end up writing a lot of boilerplate code for mediator argument classes, checking for required arguments, extracting arguments and a bunch of other stuff. AutoRoute does all that for you and much more.

Installation

dependencies:
  auto_route: [latest-version]

dev_dependencies:
  auto_route_generator: [latest-version]
  build_runner:

Setup and Usage

---

Create a placeholder class and annotate it with @MaterialAutoRouter, @CupertinoAutoRouter, @AdaptiveAutoRouter or @CustomAutoRouter which takes a list of routes as a required argument. Note: The name of the router must be prefixed with $ so we will have a generated class with the same name minus the $.

@MaterialAutoRouter(
  replaceInRouteName: 'Page,Route',
  routes: <AutoRoute>[
    AutoRoute(page: BookListPage, initial: true),
    AutoRoute(page: BookDetailsPage),
  ],
)
class $AppRouter {}

Tip: You can Shorten auto-generated route names from e.g. BookListPageRoute to BookListRoute using the replaceInRouteName argument.

Now simply run the generator

Use the [watch] flag to watch the files' system for edits and rebuild as necessary.

flutter packages pub run build_runner watch

if you want the generator to run one time and exits use

flutter packages pub run build_runner build

Finalize the setup

after you run the generator your router class will be generated, hook it up with MaterialApp.

   final _appRouter = AppRouter()
   ...
  Widget build(BuildContext context){
      return MaterialApp.router(
             routerDelegate: _appRouter.delegate(...initialConfig),
             routeInformationParser: _appRouter.defaultRouteParser(),
         ),
  }

Generated Routes

---

A PageRouteInfo object will be generated for every declared AutoRoute, These objects hold path information plus strongly-typed page arguments which are extracted from the page's default constructor.

class BookListRoute extends PageRouteInfo {
  const BookListRoute() : super(name, path: '/books');

  static const String name = 'BookListRoute';
}

Navigation

---

AutoRouter offers the same known push, pop and friends methods to manipulate the pages stack using the generated PageRouteInfo objects.

// get the scoped router by calling
AutoRouter.of(context)
// or using the extension
context.router

// adds a new entry to pages stack
router.push(BooksListRoute())

// pops the last page unless stack has 1 entry
context.router.pop()


// pops until provided route, if it already exists in stack
// else adds it to the stack (good for web Apps).
router.navigate(BooksListRoute())

// replaces last entry in stack, throws an error if stack is empty
router.replace(BooksListRoute())

Passing Arguments

---

That's the fun part! AutoRoute automatically detects and handles your page arguments for your, the generated Route object will deliver all the arguments your page needs including callback functions (to return results).

e.g. The following page widget will take an argument of type Book and a callback function that returns a rating value on pop.

class BookDetailsPage extends StatelessWidget {
 const BookDetailsRoute({this.book, this.onRateBook});

  final Book book;
  final void Function(int) onRateBook;
  ...

Note: Default values are respected. Required fields are also respected and handled properly.

The generated bookDetailsRoute will deliver the same arguments to it's corresponding page.

context.router.push(
      BookDetailsRoute(
          book: book,
          onRateBook: (rating) {
           // handle result
          }),
    );

make sure you call the callback function as you pop the page

onRateBook?.call(RESULT);
context.router.pop();

Working with Paths

Working with paths in AutoRoute is optional because PageRouteInfo objects are matched by name unless pushed as a string using the initialDeepLink property in root delegate or pushPath method in StackRouter.

if you don’t specify a path it’s going to be generated from the page name e.g. BookListPage will have ‘book-list-page’ as a path, if initial arg is set to true the path will be / unless it's relative then it will be an empty string ''.

When developing a web Application or a native App that requires deep-linking you'd probably need to define paths with clear memorable names, and that's done using the path argument in AutoRoute.

 AutoRoute(path: '/books', page: BookListPage),

Path Parameters (dynamic segments)

You can define a dynamic segment by prefixing it with a colon

 AutoRoute(path: '/books/:id', page: BookDetailsPage),

if you define a path with a dynamic segment the corresponding page's constructor must have a parameter that is annotated with @PathParam('optional-alias') with the same alias/name of the segment.

class BookDetailsPage extends StatelessWidget {
  BookDetailsPage({@PathParam('id') this.bookId});

  final int bookId;
  ...

Now writing /books/1 in the browser will navigate you to BookDetailsPage and automatically extract the bookId argument from the path.

Query Parameters

Query parameters are accessed the same way, simply annotate the constructor parameter to hold the value of the query param with @QueryParam('optional-alias') and let AutoRoute do the rest.

you could also access path/query parameters using the scoped RouteData object.

 RouteData.of(context).pathParams;
 // or using the extension
 context.route.queryParams

Redirecting Paths

Paths can be redirected using RedirectRoute. The following setup will navigate us to /books when / is matched.

<AutoRoute> [
     RedirectRoute(path: '/', redirectTo: '/books'),
     AutoRoute(path: '/books', page: BookListPage),
 ]

Note: RedirectRoutes are fully matched.

Wildcards

AutoRoute supports wildcard matching to handle invalid or undefined paths.

AutoRoute(path: '*', page: UnknownRoutePage)
// it could be used with defined prefixes
AutoRoute(path: '/profile/*', page: ProfilePage)
// or it could be used with RedirectRoute
RedirectRoute(path: '*', redirectTo: '/')

Note: be sure to always add your wildcards at the end of your route list because routes are matched in order.

More docs are coming soon

Support auto_route

You can support auto_route by liking it on Pub and staring it on Github, sharing ideas on how we can enhance a certain functionality or by reporting any problems you encounter