React.js shouldComponentUpdate() and react-router Link - reactjs

Question

I currently have a doubt about the correct combined implementation of react-router Link navigation and shouldComponentUpdate() on the root application level.
That is, I have a root component called App.jsx which contains a global component with a header, footer, sidebar etc and this same component has an ajax long-poll which retrieves new registrations in the system and updates the state when new users register.
Since I don't want to push a re-render to the component (and therefore all it's children) on ajax responses that don't have updates I decided to make use of the lovely shouldComponentUpdate() method.
So, I came up with something like this - noting that I'm making use of lo-dash:
shouldComponentUpdate (/*prevProps*/, prevState) {
return !_.isEqual(this.state,prevState);
}
With this the component correctly ignores irrelevant responses about the latest registrations.
Now, the problem appears when I have to make the routing. To clarify before, this is the kind of structure of the render():
Note: the _routerTransitionKey is just a helper I have to not make transitions when I'm navigating internal views state and it's working correctly.
<Grid key='app' id="wrapper" className="no-padding">
<Header user={this.state.user} allRegistrations={this.state.allRegistrations}/>
<section id="page-wrapper">
<NotificationArea key='internalNotification' />
<RouteHandler key={_routerTransitionKey} user={this.state.user} allRegistrations={this.state.allRegistrations}/>
</section>
</Grid>
Because I have the RouteHandler inside this global component, I have the issue that a change in the route is completely ignored by it, since the application state itself didn't change. That causes the component to never trigger the render() on navigation and therefore never update the RouteHandler.
What I needed would be something like:
shouldComponentUpdate (/*prevProps*/, prevState) {
return !_.isEqual(this.state,prevState) || ROUTE_CHANGED ;
}
My question is: does anybody out there knows of a clever approach to this issue? I'm trying to avoid having to create yet another wrapping component to handle the Routes before they reach this App component I currently have...

Answer 1

So, after the tip from #WayneC, even though the react-router doesn't inject the props directly into the react component props, there's a possible way inspired by that approach.
I achieved what I wanted by doing a slight change using not the this.props, but instead the this.context.router.getCurrentPath()
So now the solution looks like this:
shouldComponentUpdate (/*nextProps*/, nextState) {
return !_.isEqual(this.state,nextState) || this.context.router.getCurrentPath() !== _routerTransitionKey;
}
Just to make it clearer, my _routerTransitionKey gets its value from an imported Util that looks mostly like this:
var Utils = {
Router: {
TransitionKey: {
get: function(){
return Router.HistoryLocation.getCurrentPath();
}
}
}
}
_routerTransitionKey = Utils.Router.TransitionKey.get();
This _routerTransitionKey is scoped in an upper level, and I modify it on every render(), so that I keep track of it for later comparison.
And... that's it.