[Feature]: skip/replace multiple history entries of authentication flow

[mahnunchik]

What is the new or updated feature that you are suggesting?

Original question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/73176324/react-router-v6-how-to-skip-replace-multiple-history-entries-of-authentication

Why should this feature be included?

I think it could be a good feature or even documentation page because it is not clear how to skip/replace multiple history entries of authentication flow.

[mahnunchik]

According to the documentation https://reactrouter.com/docs/en/v6/examples/auth and common sense it is good practice to 'replace' login routes after success authentication.

The use of navigate("...", { replace: true }) to replace the /login route in the history stack so the user doesn't return to the login page when clicking the back button after logging in

Everything is clean if there is only one login route.

Question: what to do if there are multiple routes in authentication flow?

For example: /login/step-one-> /login/step-two -> /login/step-blabla. Number of steps may depend on user settings and/or authentication conditions. it would also be correct to let the user navigate between steps back in the authorization process (for example, choosing a different confirmation method).

Issues:

• Sample code from the documentation shows how to replace only the last step so history stack will be /login/step-one-> /login/step-two -> /. So back button follows to a meaningless location.
• It is possible to navigate(-N) and then replace it. But number of steps back is unknown because useLocation doesn't provide state.idx to calculate difference between begin and end of authentication. Underlaying library has getIndexAndLocation method but it doesn't exported in react-router. https://github.com/remix-run/history/blob/3e9dab413f4eda8d6bce565388c5ddb7aeff9f7e/packages/history/index.ts#L370

[mahnunchik]

One solution https://stackoverflow.com/a/73179042/1785926

[mahnunchik]

If index property is available on History and Update then it makes it simple to do navigate between any history entries.