Create a Next.js 14 App Router in under 60 seconds

Next.js 14 has introduced a new feature called the App Router, which provides a powerful way to handle routing in your Next.js applications. In this tutorial, we will go over how to use the App Router in your Next.js 14 application.

To get started, make sure you have Next.js 14 installed in your project. If you don’t have it installed yet, you can do so by running the following command:

npm install next@14

Once you have Next.js 14 installed, you can start using the App Router in your application. The App Router is designed to be easy to use and provides a declarative way to define your routes.

To define routes using the App Router, you can create a new file called app.routes.js in your project’s pages directory. In this file, you can define your routes using the routes array, like so:

export const routes = [
  { path: '/', page: '/' },
  { path: '/about', page: '/about' },
  { path: '/contact', page: '/contact' },
];

In this example, we have defined three routes: one for the homepage, one for the about page, and one for the contact page. Each route object in the routes array consists of a path property, which defines the URL path for the route, and a page property, which defines the corresponding page component.

Next, you can import the routes array in your pages/_app.js file, where you can use the AppRouter component from Next.js to render the appropriate page component based on the current route. Here’s an example of how you can set up the AppRouter in your _app.js file:

import { AppRouter } from 'next/dist/client/router';
import { routes } from './app.routes';

function MyApp({ Component, pageProps }) {
  return (
    <AppRouter routes={routes}>
      <Component {...pageProps} />
    </AppRouter>
  );
}

export default MyApp;

With this setup, the AppRouter component will handle routing in your Next.js application based on the routes you have defined in the app.routes.js file. You can now navigate between different pages in your application by changing the URL path in the browser.

That’s it! You have now learned how to use the new App Router feature in Next.js 14 to handle routing in your Next.js applications. Happy coding!