browser history - React Router browserHistory not working as expected

Question

As a User i want to access content via going direkt on an deep url

Situation

On the Main Page i have a link to "about" page. clicking on the the Content changes as expected. The Page gets loaded and the url changes to localhost:8080/about.

If I now refresh the Page i get the error:

Cannot GET /about

I wonder if this is the normal behavior or did I miss something out?

Routes:

var React = require('react');
var ReactRouter = require('react-router');

var Router = ReactRouter.Router;
var Route = ReactRouter.Route;
var browserHistory = ReactRouter.browserHistory;
var Main = require('./components/Main');
var About = require('./components/About');

module.exports = (
  <Router history={browserHistory} >
    <Route path="/" component={Main}>
      <Route path="about" component={About}/>
    </Route>
  </Router>
)

Main:

var React = require('react');
var ReactRouter = require('react-router');
var Link = ReactRouter.Link;

module.exports = React.createClass({
  render: function() {
    return <div>
      <div>Header!!</div>
      {this.content()}
    </div>
  },
  content: function() {
    if(this.props.children) {
      return this.props.children
    } else {
      return (
        <div>
          <h1>Main</h1>
          <Link to={'about'}>To about</Link>
        </div>)
    }
  }
});

About:

var React = require('react');
module.exports = React.createClass({
  render: function() {
    return (<div>About</div>)
  }
});

And my package.json

{
  "name": "react-starter",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo "Error: no test specified" && exit 1"
  },
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "dependencies": {
    "browserify": "^13.0.0",
    "gulp": "^3.9.0 ",
    "gulp-concat": "^2.6.0",
    "gulp-react": "^3.1.0",
    "gulp-sass": "^2.1.1",
    "gulp-server-livereload": "1.6.2",
    "gulp-util": "^3.0.7",
    "gulp-watch": "^4.3.5",
    "node-notifier": "^4.4.0",
    "react": "^0.14.6",
    "react-dom": "^0.14.6",
    "react-router": "^2.0.0-rc5",
    "reactify": "^1.1.1",
    "vinyl-source-stream": "^1.1.0",
    "watchify": "^3.7.0"
  },
  "devDependencies": {}
}

Answer 1

When using browserHistory, you must configure your server appropriately to serve at all routed paths. See this for details.