Why this lesson matters

Understand link and navigation and use it correctly in an App Router project. Dynamic segments, route groups and Link navigation let a route tree express changing identifiers and organizational structure without hard-coding navigation behavior.

How to reason about it

  • For Link and Navigation, the outcome to verify is: Use Link for internal navigation so Next.js can manage client transitions appropriately.
  • In Link and Navigation, keep this failure controlled: Using raw anchor URLs everywhere or trusting an unchecked dynamic parameter can break transitions and pass unsafe values into data queries.
  • Link and Navigation practice target: Create a dynamic product route inside a route group and navigate to it with Link after validating the identifier.

Practical walkthrough

In the Link and Navigation walkthrough: Use Link for internal navigation so Next.js can manage client transitions appropriately.

nav.tsxtsx
import Link from 'next/link';

export function Nav() {
  return <Link href="/dashboard">Dashboard</Link>;
}

Practice it yourself

Practice

Link and Navigation exercise

Create a dynamic product route inside a route group and navigate to it with Link after validating the identifier.

  • Record the expected result before execution
  • Test one valid path and one lesson-specific failure path
  • Explain in two lines which boundary owns the decision

Summary