Relative routing to index route does not navigate

[RMHonor]

Which project does this relate to?

Router

Describe the bug

Performing relative navigation to the index route does not navigate.

E.g., if I have a route of /posts/, navigating from="/posts/ to="." does not navigate, even if current URL is a child route (e.g. /posts/$postId).

Your Example Website or App

https://stackblitz.com/edit/tanstack-router-vlwhvtl4?file=src%2Froutes%2Fposts.route.tsx

Steps to Reproduce the Bug or Issue

• Navigate to a specific post (e.g. /posts/1)
• Click the To Index link on the left hand side above the post links
• The page does not navigate back to the index

Expected behavior

I would expect the route to successfully navigate to the index route if it is currently on a child route.

Screenshots or Videos

Screen.Recording.2025-07-31.at.10.55.07.mov

Platform

• Router Version: 1.130.9
• OS: macOS
• Browser: Chrome
• Browser Version: 138.0
• Bundler: vite
• Bundler Version: 6.3.5

Additional context

No response

[nlynzaad]

whereas ".." is used to navigate one route back based on the route it is rendered on or the from specified, "." will always reload the current location irrespective of from specified. Any reason you are looking to use this instead of specifying to="/posts"? Would like to understand the use case where this would be preferred

[RMHonor]

Thanks for the clarification @nlynzaad.

Our use case is tabs that live at the parent level which itself includes params (e.g. /accounts/$accountId), and ideally we'd like to specify links to child routes (including index) without needing to pass around the params. E.g. navigate from /accounts/$accountId/details to /accounts/$accountId/.

We could just use absolute paths, and pass through the params for each link option.

FWIW this did used to work, the behaviour changed at some point between 1.124 and 1.130

[schiller-manuel]

you can just do this

<Link from="/accounts/$accountId/details" to="/accounts/$accountId/">...</Link>

param should not be required to be passed in

[RMHonor]

@schiller-manuel the navigation lives in the parent (/accounts/$accountId).

Do you think it would be reasonable to change the types so "." is not possible when using a from? Just to prevent this confusion.

[uooq]

I had the same confusion (and note, this USED to work). My use case was that I have a route with some tabs on it. The page that displays the top is handling the navigation when a tab is clicked. One of the tabs is an index page.

The page with the tabs is $stationId.tsx and the tabs are things like $stationId.foo.tsx and $stationId.index.tsx.

I had code that used to work properly

const navigate = useNavigate({ from: '$stationId' })

function handleTabClick(tabId: string) {
  if (tabId === 'foo') {
    navigate({ to: './foo' })
  } else {
    navigate({ to: '.' })
  }
}

I was able to fix this by changing the to: '.' to use an absolute path but it does look like something broke and if it's undesirable to fix, I agree that it would be good to prevent the use of '.' in relative path navigation.

[othompson2]

I'm also experiencing this issue using a tabbed solution like the example defined here in the docs.

<Menu
  from="/posts"
  items={[{ to: '.' }, { to: './$postId', params: { postId: 'postId' } }]}
/>

Adding to that though when rendered using SSR with start the exact match logic seems to not work - but it does on client side navigation?

<Link
  {...item}
  from={props.from}
  activeOptions={{ exact: true, includeSearch: false }}
  activeProps={{ 'data-state': 'active' }}
  className="data-[state=active]:text-red-600"
>

https://stackblitz.com/edit/tanstack-router-1yctepja?file=src%2Fcomponents%2Fmenu.tsx,src%2Fmain.tsx,src%2Froutes%2Fitems%2Froute.tsx

[jovanblazek]

I'm also experiencing this issue. Any progress on the PR?