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Routing libraries

By default, the navigation is performed with a native <a> element. You can customize it to use your own router. For instance, using Next.js's Link or react-router.

There are two main components available to perform navigations. The most common one is the Link as its name might suggest. It renders a native <a> element and applies the href as an attribute.

Link
<Link href="/">Link</Link>

You can also make a button perform navigation actions. If your component is extending ButtonBase, providing a href prop enables the link mode. For instance, with a Button component:

Link
<Button href="/" variant="contained">
  Link
</Button>

In real-life applications, using a native <a> element is rarely enough. You can improve the user experience by using an enhanced Link component systematically. The theme of MUI allows configuring this component once. For instance, with react-router:

import { Link as RouterLink, LinkProps as RouterLinkProps } from 'react-router-dom';
import { LinkProps } from '@mui/material/Link';

const LinkBehavior = React.forwardRef<
  HTMLAnchorElement,
  Omit<RouterLinkProps, 'to'> & { href: RouterLinkProps['to'] }
>((props, ref) => {
  const { href, ...other } = props;
  // Map href (MUI) -> to (react-router)
  return <RouterLink ref={ref} to={href} {...other} />;
});

const theme = createTheme({
  components: {
    MuiLink: {
      defaultProps: {
        component: LinkBehavior,
      } as LinkProps,
    },
    MuiButtonBase: {
      defaultProps: {
        LinkComponent: LinkBehavior,
      },
    },
  },
});
LinkLink

component prop

You can achieve the integration with third-party routing libraries with the component prop. You can learn more about this prop in the composition guide.

Here are a few demos with react-router. You can apply the same strategy with all the components: BottomNavigation, Card, etc.

With prop forwarding
Without prop forwarding
<Router>
  <Link component={RouterLink} to="/">
    With prop forwarding
  </Link>
  <br />
  <Link component={LinkBehavior}>Without prop forwarding</Link>
</Router>

Button

<Router>
  <Button component={RouterLink} to="/">
    With prop forwarding
  </Button>
  <br />
  <Button component={LinkBehavior}>With inlining</Button>
</Router>

Note: The button base component adds the role="button" attribute when it identifies the intent to render a button without a native <button> element. This can create issues when rendering a link. If you are not using one of the href, to, or component="a" props, you need to override the role attribute. The above demo achieves this by setting role={undefined} after the spread props.

const LinkBehavior = React.forwardRef((props, ref) => (
  <RouterLink ref={ref} to="/" {...props} role={undefined} />
));

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More examples

Next.js

Next.js has a custom Link component. The example folder provides adapters for usage with MUI.

  • The first version of the adapter is the NextLinkComposed component. This component is unstyled and only responsible for handling the navigation. The prop href was renamed to to avoid a naming conflict. This is similar to react-router's Link component.

    import Button from '@mui/material/Button';
import { NextLinkComposed } from '../src/Link';

export default function Index() {
  return (
    <Button
      component={NextLinkComposed}
      to={{
        pathname: '/about',
        query: { name: 'test' },
      }}
    >
      Button link
    </Button>
  );
}

  • The second version of the adapter is the Link component. This component is styled. It leverages the link component of MUI with NextLinkComposed.

    import Link from '../src/Link';

export default function Index() {
  return (
    <Link
      href={{
        pathname: '/about',
        query: { name: 'test' },
      }}
    >
      Link
    </Link>
  );
}

Gatsby

The Link component of Gatsby is built on @reach/router. You can use the same previous documentation for react-router. Unlike Next.js, it doesn't require you to create an adapter.