Question

Technologies:

javascript

reactjs

Tolerim

a day ago

The back button in React Router v6 takes you all the way back to the referrer.

While using my app, I have noticed that the back button works well in some areas, but not in others. Here is how I discovered the problem:

Started from Dashboard and navigated to New Thing.
From New Thing, I went to Flow page 1, then to page 2, page 3, and finally to page 4. I closed the page at this point which took me back to the Dashboard.
Next, I started from the Dashboard again and navigated to New Thing. At Flow page 1, I pressed the back button, and it took me back to page 3 of the last "New Thing."

To resolve the issue, I added the following code at the highest level of my app:

  const location = useLocation();

  useEffect(() => {
    console.log(location);
  }, [location]);

Although each page uses the navigate() function and updates the location correctly, using the { replace: true } parameter at the beginning of New Thing or never setting it, or always setting it, doesn't seem to make any difference. The browser's history stack is always updated appropriately, yet the back button persists in taking me back to page 3 of the previous "New Thing." When I check document.referrer in dev tools, it shows the URL to page 3. I'm unsure why it keeps jumping back to that page. Do you have any suggestions?

Answers(1)

Accepted Answer

Based on the information you have provided, it is not possible to directly determine the cause of the issue without further investigation. However, here are some general steps you can take to try and debug the problem: 1. Check for any errors in the console that might be causing the back button to malfunction. 2. Double-check that the back button is actually navigating to the correct location by logging the location object for each page. 3. Make sure that you are using the correct history navigation method (goBack() or navigate(-1)) to go back to the previous page instead of relying on the browser's default behavior. 4. Check if there are any conflicting route definitions or hooks that might be causing the issue. 5. If the problem persists, consider using a tool like React Router DevTools to debug the router and history transitions. Ultimately, it's difficult to determine the root cause of the issue without more information about the app and the code that's causing the problem.