Route Handlers

Route Handlers let you set up custom Request handlers for specific routes using Web Request and Response APIs.

Convention of Route Handlers

• They are defined with route.js/ts files.
• They can be nested but can't be sibling of a page.js/ts.
• They support all 7 HTTP methods (GET,POST,PATCH,PUT,DELETE,HEAD,OPTIONS).
• They have NextRequest and NextResponse helper objects for advances use cases.
• They do not participate in layouts or client-side navigation like pages.

Behavior

Route Handlers are cached only when using the GET method with the Response object. We must revalidate our cached data after its mutation.

// app/items/route.ts
export async function GET() {
  const res = await fetch('https://data.mongodb-api.com/...', {
    headers: {
      'Content-Type': 'application/json',
      'API-Key': process.env.DATA_API_KEY,
    },
  })
  const data = await res.json()

  return Response.json({ data })
}