How to send data through Link in Next/JS?

Question

My Next version is 13.1.5. I am trying to send contact.name through the Link in my component. Whats the best way to do this? The first code of the Link is just my original code.

      <Link
          className={styles.summaryLink}
          href={`${routes.accountShow(contact.number)}/contacts`}
        >
          {contact.name}
      </Link>

This second is what I tried to do with pathname and query but when I do this it keeps giving an error saying href needs to be a string and the url also goes to /contacts/[object,object]. I am also not trying to show contact.name in the url at all if possible.

   <Link
      className={styles.summaryLink}
      href={{
        pathname: `${routes.accountShow(contact.number)}/contacts`,
        query: { contactName: contact.name },
      }}
    >
      {contact.name}
    </Link>

you can use the `to` prop instead of `href` and construct the URL string manually. something like this maybe ` {contact.name} ` — Zynga, Jul 13 '23 at 11:46
@Zynga is there anyway where i can send the data without having it show in the url — Karnveer Grewal, Jul 13 '23 at 11:53
@KarnveerGrewal then may be you should be using the react routers `history` object to push data. — Zynga, Jul 18 '23 at 07:52

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 13 '23 at 12:14

You might find a context helpful at this point.A React Context allows defined data to be shared across components. In your case you could implement it as follows

import { createContext } from 'react';

const ContactContext = createContext();

export default ContactContext;

in your root component you must then create the context provider

import ContactContext from './ContactContext';

function MyApp({ Component, pageProps }) {
  const [contactName, setContactName] = useState(null);

  return (
    <ContactContext.Provider value={{ contactName, setContactName }}>
      <Component {...pageProps} />
    </ContactContext.Provider>
  );
}

export default MyApp;

at this point we have defined the state contactName and pass the value and the set function to the created context. Each component can now set the state of the MyApp component.

in the area of your navigation, you would then have to set the context accordingly. You can then access the corresponding function as well as the value itself via the useContext hook

import { useContext } from 'react';
import { useRouter } from 'next/router';
import ContactContext from './ContactContext';

function YourComponent({ contact }) {
  const { setContactName } = useContext(ContactContext);
  const router = useRouter();

  const handleClick = (e) => {
    e.preventDefault();
    setContactName(contact.name);
    router.push(`${routes.accountShow(contact.number)}/contacts`);
  };

  return (
    <a
      className={styles.summaryLink}
      href={`${routes.accountShow(contact.number)}/contacts`}
      onClick={handleClick}
    >
    </a>
  );
}

The display component can also read the values via the useContext hook and then display the data accordingly.

import { useContext } from 'react';
import ContactContext from './ContactContext';

function ContactPage() {
  const { contactName } = useContext(ContactContext);

  return <div>Contact Name: {contactName}</div>;
}

but a little warning. If you use a lot of context based components, code becomes very quickly bad maintainable. I would give you the idea to replace the name with a kind of ID and define it as part of the route.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 16 '23 at 15:25

The first one is correct. But you should use to attribute instead of href.

Let me share the updated code

     <Link
          className={styles.summaryLink}
          to={`${routes.accountShow(contact.number)}/contacts`}
        >
          {contact.name}
      </Link>

How to send data through Link in Next/JS?

2 Answers2