Add breadcrumbs to a Next.js site

Add breadcrumbs helps with accessibility, navigation and SEO. I like them and I use them on my blog sites. Fortunately, there is a straight forward way to add breadcrumbs to your website. Below are the steps I took to add breadcrumbs.

There are a few steps to take to install breadcrumbs on the website.

Even though this plugin has not recently been updated, it still works fine. The plugin is called nextjs-breadcrumbs. Written specifically for Next.js, the author, Niklas Mencke, states this plugin will only work with Next.js websites.

npm install nextjs-breadcrumbs

My initial component looks like this.

import styles from './breadcrumbs.module.css';
import { default as NextBreadcrumbs } from 'nextjs-breadcrumbs';

const Breadcrumbs = () => {
  return (
    <div className={styles.breadcrumbs_container}>
      return <NextBreadcrumbs  rootLabel='Home' />;
    </div>
  );
};

export default Breadcrumbs;

There are several options for how to display, style and construct the Breadcrumbs on your site. You can read about all of them on the [https://github.com/NiklasMencke/nextjs-breadcrumbs#pass-custom-list-of-characters-that-should-be-replaced-in-each-label](nextjs-breadcrumbs Github).

You should import the new component into your pages with a standard import statement. Even though the GitHub does an excellent job explaining some the options, I made some notes below:

import Breadcrumbs from '../../../components/core/breadcrumbs';

If you want to use default styles, then you need to add the important statement for the styles into your _app.js file

import 'nextjs-breadcrumbs/dist/index.css';

Then change the component like this:

import styles from './breadcrumbs.module.css';
import { default as NextBreadcrumbs } from 'nextjs-breadcrumbs';

const Breadcrumbs = () => {
  return (
    <div className={styles.breadcrumbs_container}>
-    return <NextBreadcrumbs  rootLabel='Home' />;
+    return <NextBreadcrumbs useDefaultStyle={true} rootLabel='Home' />;
    </div>
  );
};

export default Breadcrumbs;

I dug into the node modules and copied nextjs-breadcrumbs/dist/index.css over into my CSS Modules file called breadcrumbs.module.css. I removed a prefix and the default styles are like this:

.breadcrumbs_container ol {
  list-style: none;
  overflow: hidden;
  font: 16px Sans-Serif;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li {
  float: left;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li a {
  color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
  text-decoration: none;
  padding: 10px 0 10px 50px;
  background: rgb(230, 224, 224);
  position: relative;
  display: block;
  float: left;
}

.breadcrumbs_container li a::after {
  content: ' ';
  display: block;
  width: 0;
  height: 0;
  border-top: 50px solid transparent; /* Go big on the size, and let overflow hide */
  border-bottom: 50px solid transparent;
  border-left: 30px solid rgb(230, 224, 224);
  position: absolute;
  top: 50%;
  margin-top: -50px;
  left: 100%;
  z-index: 2;
}

.breadcrumbs_container li a::before {
  content: ' ';
  display: block;
  width: 0;
  height: 0;
  border-top: 50px solid transparent;
  border-bottom: 50px solid transparent;
  border-left: 30px solid white;
  position: absolute;
  top: 50%;
  margin-top: -50px;
  margin-left: 1px;
  left: 100%;
  z-index: 1;
}

.breadcrumbs_container li:first-child a {
  padding-left: 20px;
  pointer-events: visible !important;
  cursor: pointer !important;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:nth-child(2) a {
  background: rgb(224, 233, 233);
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:nth-child(2) a:after {
  border-left-color: rgb(224, 233, 233);
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:nth-child(3) a {
  background: rgb(224, 233, 233);
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:nth-child(3) a:after {
  border-left-color: rgb(224, 233, 233);
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:nth-child(4) a {
  background: rgb(224, 233, 233);
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:nth-child(4) a:after {
  border-left-color: rgb(224, 233, 233);
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:nth-child(5) a {
  background: rgb(224, 233, 233);
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:nth-child(5) a:after {
  border-left-color: rgb(224, 233, 233);
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:last-child a {
  background: rgb(238, 235, 232) !important;
  color: black;
  pointer-events: none;
  cursor: default;
  padding-right: 20px;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:last-child a::after {
  border: 0;
}

.breadcrumbs_container li a:hover {
  background: rgb(194, 226, 221);
}
.breadcrumbs_container li a:hover:after {
  border-left-color: rgb(194, 226, 221) !important;
}

I liked the default styles but they didn't fit my design. So my simple CSS in the breadcrumbs.module.css file looks like this:

.breadcrumbs_container {
  margin-bottom: 3.5rem;
}

.breadcrumbs_container ol {
  list-style: none;
  overflow: hidden;
  font-size: 90%;
  margin: 0;
  display: flex;
  flex-wrap: wrap;
  padding-left: 25px;
}

.breadcrumbs_container li {
  list-style: none;
  text-transform: capitalize;
  height: 4rem;
}

.breadcrumbs_container li a {
  text-decoration: none;
  margin-bottom: 0;
}

.breadcrumbs_container li a::after {
  content: ' > ';
  padding: 0 0.5rem;
}

.breadcrumbs_container li:first-child a {
  content: ' ';
  pointer-events: visible !important;
  cursor: pointer !important;
}
.breadcrumbs_container li:first-child a {
  pointer-events: visible !important;
  cursor: pointer !important;
}

.breadcrumbs_container li:last-child a {
  pointer-events: none;
  cursor: default;
  font-weight: 900;
  font-size: 95%;
  border-bottom: 1px solid;
  border-bottom-width: 2px;
  padding-right: 0;
  margin-right: 0;
}

.breadcrumbs_container li:last-child a::after {
  border: 0;
  content: none;
}

There are more options in the GitHub.