Why and How to Use Gatsby’s Link Component

Add Custom Styles for the Active Link Using Gatsby’s Link Component

Customize Styles for Partially Matched URLs With Gatsby’s Link Component

Include Information About State in Navigation With Gatsby’s Link Component

Replace Navigation History Items with Gatsby’s Link Component

Navigate to a New Page Programmatically in Gatsby

Use Gatsby’s Link Component to Improve Site Performance and Simplify Site Development

When viewing pages that partially match the `to` prop in a Gatsby `Link` component, it’s often desirable to show that page as “active”, such as when viewing an anchor link to a heading on the page, or showing the “blog” link as active when viewing `/blog/my-great-post/`. This video will show you how to pass a function to `getProps` and identify partial matches using the `isPartiallyCurrent` prop.

Instructor: [00:00] In order to keep the active state for a link to decisions that has an anchor, or in the event of a blog where it was /blog/ the name of your blog post, we need to use something called partial matching. In Gatsby, we do this by accessing the props of the current nav item.

[00:21] Here, we're able to pass a function. That function gets props about the current link from Reach Router. We're going to see if part is-partially-current is true. Is partially-current comes back if any section of the two-prop matches the current path.

[00:42] What we can do is, we can say, if is-partially-current, then we're going to return a style prop. If not, we're going to return nothing. I'm going to save that, make it a little easier to read.

[00:59] Now in here, we get to override the style prop entirely, which means that we need to keep our link styles, so we can just spread those in. We also want to put in the active styles, so we're going to spread those in as well.

[01:14] Upon saving, we should see that even with our anchor, we still get the active state. Without the anchor, we're getting the active state as well.

[01:27] This is a great way to make sure that parent nav items stay highlighted even when subsections of the pages are being accessed.

Course

Use Gatsby’s Link Component to Improve Site Performance and Simplify Site Development

Customize Styles for Partially Matched URLs With Gatsby’s Link Component

Share this video with your friends