[Platform] Add exact property to register route in plugin

[XavierM]

In the security solution, we are having different routes like

• app/security/overview
• app/security/alerts
• app/security/hosts
• etc...

we would like to redirect the route app/security to app/security/overview by doing that

  core.application.register({
      id: 'security',
      title: 'Security',
      appRoute: 'app/security',
      navLinkStatus: AppNavLinkStatus.hidden,
      mount: async (params: AppMountParameters) => {
        const [{ application }] = await core.getStartServices();
        application.navigateToApp(`${APP_ID}:${SecurityPageName.overview}`, { replace: true });
        return () => true;
      },
    });

However, when we are doing that, we are breaking all the different routes in our app. Since everything is going to the mount of the route app/security. That's why we think to add an exact property will resolve our problem.

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-platform (Team:Platform)

[pgayvallet]

In the security solution, we are having different routes like

Just to be sure to understand:

All yours 'routes' are mounted as distinct apps, right? Else I guess we wouldn't encounter such an issue?

Follow-up question (if that's the case): This decision was driven by the need to have multiple navlinks to the same 'app', is that it?

[joshdover]

Follow-up question (if that's the case): This decision was driven by the need to have multiple navlinks to the same 'app', is that it?

I believe so, yes. But I also know that Enterprise Search would like have a similar routing scheme for their two different apps. I think it's approximately:

• /app/enterprise_search/workplace_search -> workplace app
• /app/enterprise_search/app_search -> app search app
• /app/enterprise_search -> a common landing page

@constancecchen is that about right?

[cee-chen]

Yes, that's right - we'd love to have our routing set up that way! 😄

[pgayvallet]

I have no real objections to add an option that would reflect the <Route> exact property.

The only thing I can think of is that navigateToApp may behave quite strangely in some edge cases:

core.application.register({
      id: 'security',
      title: 'Security',
      appRoute: 'app/security',
      exactRoute: true,
      mount: async (params: AppMountParameters) => {
        .....
      },
});

// later

// will redirect to `/app/security/some/path` which is not handled by the route, resulting on a 404
core.application.navigateToApp('security', {path: 'some/path'});

Not sure this is something we should really be concerned about? We could add a check in navigateToApp to check is the app's route is exact and raise an error when using path option with an exact route. Not sure this is really necessary though.

[XavierM]

or maybe we can have something like that

core.application.register({
      id: 'security',
      title: 'Security',
      appRoute: 'app/security',
      redirectTo: {appId} or {appRoute},
});

[pgayvallet]

The issue with the path parameter remains the same (what should core.application.navigateToApp('security', {path: 'some/path'}); do).

I also think that the route behavior should remains strictly the registrant responsibility, so I think i'd prefer the exact/exactRoute option.

[pgayvallet]

After sync discussion with the team:

• We will be implementing the exactRoute option for 7.9
• Depending on the need from other apps/teams, we will see post 8.0 if we implement an equivalent of legacy's NavLink to allow registering multiple navLinks pointing to different paths of the same app. If we do so, we would then probably deprecate the exactRoute option in favor of using this new feature.

[cee-chen]

Just wanted to give an update on Enterprise Search's end - we eventually decided on registering our overview app as /app/enterprise_search/overview instead of /app/enterprise_search with exactRoute: true after all.

We made this choice because we ended up realizing exactRoute meant we couldn't ever set any subrouting within the overview plugin, such as /app/enterprise_search/upgrade (for example). We totally understand that it's a limitation of React Router itself of course, but we wanted to leave our overview plugin open for potential routing expansion in the future instead of locking ourselves into /app/enterprise_search only.

Apologies that we ended up not using this super useful functionality that you implemented, but thanks so much for giving us the option / thinking of us!! 🙇‍♀️