When a document isn't found on a web server, it should send a 404 status code. This indicates to machines that the document is not there: search engines won't index it, CDNs won't cache it, etc. Most SPAs today just serve everything as 200 whether the page exists or not, but for you that stops today!
There are two primary cases where a Remix site should send a 404:
The first case is already handled by Remix, you don't have to throw a response yourself. It knows your routes, so it knows if nothing matched (consider using a Splat Route to handle this case). The second case is up to you, but it's really easy.
As soon as you know you don't have what the user is looking for you should throw a response.
export async function loader({
params,
}: LoaderFunctionArgs) {
const page = await db.page.findOne({
where: { slug: params.slug },
});
if (!page) {
throw new Response(null, {
status: 404,
statusText: "Not Found",
});
}
return json(page);
}
Remix will catch the response and send your app down the Error Boundary path. It's actually exactly like Remix's automatic error handling, but instead of receiving an Error from useRouteError(), you'll receive an object with your response status, statusText, and extracted data.
What's nice about throwing a response is that code in your loader stops executing. The rest of your code doesn't have to deal with the chance that the page is defined or not (this is especially handy for TypeScript).
Throwing also ensures that your route component doesn't render if the loader wasn't successful. Your route components only have to consider the "happy path". They don't need pending states, error states, or in our case here, not-found states.
You probably already have one at the root of your app. This will handle all thrown responses that weren't handled in a nested route. Here's a sample:
export function ErrorBoundary() {
const error = useRouteError();
return (
<html>
<head>
<title>Oops!</title>
<Meta />
<Links />
</head>
<body>
<h1>
{isRouteErrorResponse(error)
? `${error.status} ${error.statusText}`
: error instanceof Error
? error.message
: "Unknown Error"}
</h1>
<Scripts />
</body>
</html>
);
}
