Set state property from URL using react-router - reactjs

Question

I have a container component with a modal in it that is opened and closed based on a state property.
I want to control this via the URL, i.e. I want to have
/projects - the modal is NOT open
/projects/add - the modal IS open
As well as being able to link directly to it, I want the URL to change when I click on links within the main container to open the modal.
Can someone explain how I could do this, or point me in the right direction of a good tutorial?

Answer 1

NOTE: This way is not perfect. Even more it's rather antipattern than pattern. The reason I publish it here is it works fine for me and I like the way I can add modals (I can add modal to any page and in general their components don't depends on the other app in any way. And I keep nice url's instead of ugly ?modal=login-form). But be ready to get problems before you find everything working. Think twice!
Let's consider you want following url's:
/users to show <Users /> component
/users/login to show <Users /> component and <Login /> modal over it
You want Login to not depend on Users in anyway, say adding login modal to other pages without pain.
Let's consider you have kinda root component which stands on top of other components. For example Users render may look something like this:
render() {
return (
<Layout>
<UsersList />
</Layout>
);
}
And Layout's render may look something like this:
render() {
return (
<div className="page-wrapper">
<Header />
<Content>
{this.props.children}
</Content>
<Footer />
</div>
);
}
The trick is to force modal's injection to <Layout /> every time we need it.
The most simple approach is to use flux for it. I'm using redux and have ui reducer for such page meta-information, you can create ui store if you use other flux implementation. Anyway, final goal is to render modal if <Layout />'s state (or even better props) contains modal equal to some string representing modal name. Something like:
render() {
return (
<div className="page-wrapper">
<Header />
<Content>
{this.props.children}
</Content>
{this.props.modal ?
<Modal key={this.props.modal} /> :
null
}
<Footer />
</div>
);
}
<Modal /> returns modal component depends on given key (In case of our login-form key we want to receive <Login /> component).
Okay, let's go to router. Consider following code snippet.
const modal = (key) => {
return class extends React.Component {
static displayName = "ModalWrapper";
componentWillMount() {
// this is redux code that adds modal to ui store. Replace it with your's flux
store.dispatch(uiActions.setModal(key));
}
componentWillUnmount() {
store.dispatch(uiActions.unsetModal());
}
render() {
return (
<div className="Next">{this.props.children}</div>
);
}
}
};
...
<Route path="users" component={Next}>
<IndexRoute component={Users}>
<Route path="login" component={modal('login-form')}>
<IndexRoute component={Users} />
</Route>
</Route>
(Don't care about Next - I add it here for simplicity. Imagine it just renders this.props.children)
modal() function returns react component that triggers change in ui store. So as soon as router gets /users/login it adds login-form to ui store, <Layout /> get it as prop (or state) and renders <Modal /> which renders corresponding for given key modal.

Answer 2

To programmatically assess to a new URL, pass the router to your component and use push. push for example will be call in the callback trigger by the user action.
When setting your router set a route to /projects/:status. then, in your component route, you can read the value of status using this.props.param.status. Read "whats-it-look-lik" from react-router for an example.