Journey To: Software Engineer

From warehouse racks to full stack

Day 219: React Router Realization

Why I'm not gonna use React Router.

December 26, 2025

Hello friends,


So I realized something today, I don't need the React Router.


It Was NextJS The Whole Time


I've been racking my brain trying to figure out this whole routing and protected routes thing. I looked into the React Router and started learning about that whole ecosystem. But today I came to the realization that NextJS is what is currently allowing my routing, not React. I was until today under the impression that the whole folder and page.tsx structure I've been using has been a standard with React. But I've realized now that it is actually part of NextJS. React Router would be useful if I wasn't already using a powerful tool like NextJS, I've just become so used to it that I forgot I was even using it.


Moving Forward


Now it's a matter of combining the routing capabilities of NextJS and the auth patterns from Supabase. I spent a bit of time today looking into how this all works and while I have a better understanding than when I did the Water Me project I still have a lot to learn. Next step is to setup the login page, which I'll have to do another day. Until next time, friend.