How to access URL path using useParams hook in React js
Tags: react, useparams, hooks, webdev
Published: 2021-12-10 08:43:17

In my previous posts, we have studied about various hooks that comes with React package which enables us to perform different functions within our app. Today, we'll explore the useParams hook that comes with React-Router-dom package and allows us to access the URL parameters for example if you want to access the id for a particular URL then you will have to make use of useParams hook.
In this tutorial, we will create a simple app in which there is a list of products and clicking on an individual product will redirect the user to the product detail page and in order to access the product detail page we will make use of useParams hook.
Let's start by creating a new react app by typing in the following command in our command line:

````javascript
npx create-react-app useparams-example-app
```

Now, we navigate to our app and clear out some unnecessary files like logo.svg, also we can remove the commented out code to make our app look neat and clean.
Now, we would need to install the react-router-dom package in order to be able to access different routes and also make use of useParams hook:

```javascript
npm i react-router-dom
``` 

Now, we will navigate to App.js file of our app and write some basic code to be displayed on the Home page of our app, we would also need to import BrowserRouter, Switch , Route, Link and useParams objects from react-router-dom to be able to access the navigation properties of this package. After the imports and rendering the home page of our app at the default path of "/", our App.js file will look like the following:

```javascript
import React from 'react'
import './App.css';
import { BrowserRouter as Router,Switch , Route, Link, useParams} from 'react-router-dom';


function App() {

  return (
    <BrowserRouter>
<div className="App">
   <h1>React Router useParams Hook Demo</h1>
   <div className="navbar">
   <Link to="/">Home</Link>
   </div>
  
   <Switch>
     <Route exact path="/">
       <h2><p>Welcome to the Home Component</p></h2>
     </Route>
     
    </div>
    </BrowserRouter>
    
  );
}

export default App;
```

Notice that we have to wrap the entire component in BrowserRouter component and the 'Link' method will create a hyperlink to access a particular component.

Now we will also create an About us page to make things more clear and for this purpose we will have to create an About.js file in the src directory of our project, the code for About.js file is mentioned below:

```javascript
import React from 'react'

export const About = () => {
    return (
        <div>
            <h2>About Us Component</h2> 

        </div>
    )
}

```

Now, let's write some code related to useParams hook. Here, we have a list of products which we want to list down on a Products page on our app, we will first include the products object in the App.js as follows:

```javascript
const products = {
    "air-jordan-3-valor-blue": {
      name: "VALOUR BLUE",
      img:
        "https://secure-images.nike.com/is/image/DotCom/CT8532_104_A_PREM?$SNKRS_COVER_WD$&align=0,1"
    },
    "jordan-mars-270-london": {
      name: "JORDAN MARS 270 LONDON",
      img:
        "https://secure-images.nike.com/is/image/DotCom/CV3042_001_A_PREM?$SNKRS_COVER_WD$&align=0,1"
    },
    "air-jordan-1-zoom-racer-blue": {
      name: "RACER BLUE",
      img:
        "https://secure-images.nike.com/is/image/DotCom/CK6637_104_A_PREM?$SNKRS_COVER_WD$&align=0,1"
    }
  };

```

Now, we will create a link to the Products page where we will list down all the above products nicely:
```javascript
import React from 'react'
import './App.css';
import { BrowserRouter as Router,Redirect, Switch ,Route,Link} from 'react-router-dom';
import {ProductsPage} from './components/ProductsPage'
import {About } from './components/About'

function App() {

  const products = {
    "air-jordan-3-valor-blue": {
      name: "VALOUR BLUE",
      img:
        "https://secure-images.nike.com/is/image/DotCom/CT8532_104_A_PREM?$SNKRS_COVER_WD$&align=0,1"
    },
    "jordan-mars-270-london": {
      name: "JORDAN MARS 270 LONDON",
      img:
        "https://secure-images.nike.com/is/image/DotCom/CV3042_001_A_PREM?$SNKRS_COVER_WD$&align=0,1"
    },
    "air-jordan-1-zoom-racer-blue": {
      name: "RACER BLUE",
      img:
        "https://secure-images.nike.com/is/image/DotCom/CK6637_104_A_PREM?$SNKRS_COVER_WD$&align=0,1"
    }
  };

  return (
    <BrowserRouter>
<div className="App">
   <h1>React Router useParams Hook Demo</h1>
   <div className="navbar">
   <Link to="/">Home</Link>
   <Link to="/products">Products</Link>
   <Link to="/about">About</Link>
   </div>
  
   
   <Switch>
     <Route exact path="/">
       <h2><p>Welcome to the Home Component</p></h2>
       
     </Route>
     <Route path="/products">
    <ProductsPage products={products}/>
     </Route>
     <Route path="/about">
       <About />
     </Route>
   </Switch>
    </div>
    </BrowserRouter>
    
  );
}

export default App;

```

Notice that we have passed the products object as a prop to the ProductsPage component so that we can display it there.
Now create a ProductsPage component and display the products:

```jaavscript
import React from 'react'
import { Link, Switch, Route } from 'react-router-dom'


export const ProductsPage = ({products}) => {
 
    return (
       
        <div className="product-box">

        <h2 className="title"> Products Component</h2>
        <div className="box">
        {Object.entries(products).map(([id, {name,img}]) => (
                <li key={id}>
                    <Link to={`/product/${id}`}>
                        <h2 className="product-name">{name}</h2>
                        <img src={img} alt={name}/>
                    </Link>
                </li>
            ))} 
        </div>
            

        </div>
    )
}
```
We made use of javascript map method to display the list of products. Notice that the name of each product is a link which will navigate to the detail page of each product:

```javascript
import React from 'react'
import { useParams } from 'react-router'

export const Product = ({products}) => {
    let {id} = useParams();
    const product = products[slug]

    const {name,img} = product;
    {console.log(id)}
   
    return (
        <div>
           <h2>This is the Product Detail component</h2> 
            <h2>{slug}</h2>
            <h3>Brand: {name}</h3>
            <img src={img}  alt={name}/>
        </div>
    )
}

```
In the Product component, we will use the useparams hook to extract the id from the url for each product.
You may be wondering from where do the id is passed to the Product component so it was passed from App.js where we defined the Route for the Product component by specifying the colon symbol i-e <path="/product/:id">

````javascript
import React from 'react'
import './App.css';
import { BrowserRouter as Router,Redirect, Switch ,Route,Link,useParams} from 'react-router-dom';
import {ProductsPage} from './components/ProductsPage'
import {About } from './components/About;
import {Product} from './components/Product'

function App() {

  const products = {
    "air-jordan-3-valor-blue": {
      name: "VALOUR BLUE",
      img:
        "https://secure-images.nike.com/is/image/DotCom/CT8532_104_A_PREM?$SNKRS_COVER_WD$&align=0,1"
    },
    "jordan-mars-270-london": {
      name: "JORDAN MARS 270 LONDON",
      img:
        "https://secure-images.nike.com/is/image/DotCom/CV3042_001_A_PREM?$SNKRS_COVER_WD$&align=0,1"
    },
    "air-jordan-1-zoom-racer-blue": {
      name: "RACER BLUE",
      img:
        "https://secure-images.nike.com/is/image/DotCom/CK6637_104_A_PREM?$SNKRS_COVER_WD$&align=0,1"
    }
  };

  return (
    <BrowserRouter>
<div className="App">
   <h1>React Router useParams Hook Demo</h1>
   <div className="navbar">
   <Link to="/">Home</Link>
   <Link to="/topics">Topics</Link>
   <Link to="/about">About</Link>
   </div>
  
   
   <Switch>
     <Route exact path="/">
       <h2><p>Welcome to the Home Component</p></h2>
       
     </Route>
     <Route path="/products">
    <ProductsPage products={products}/>
     </Route>
     <Route path="/about">
       <About />
     </Route>
     <Route path="/product/:id"><Product products={products}/></Route>
   </Switch>
    </div>
    </BrowserRouter>
    
  );
}

export default App;
```
So, in this manner we were able to display all the products and also output the ID for each product by the use of useParams hook.

Hope you enjoyed reading the article and can use it further in your apps.

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Happy Coding...