ROUTING IN MICROFRONTEND APPLICATIONS: ARCHITECTURAL APPROACHES, CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS

Abstract

The article focuses on the analysis and comparison of routing approaches in microfrontend architecture, which represents one of the key areas of modern web development. The relevance of the topic is determined by the rapid dynamics of technological progress and the constant growth of requirements for scalability, modularity, and flexibility of client systems. Microfrontend architecture is considered the frontend equivalent of the microservice paradigm, ensuring the autonomy of individual modules, their independent testing and updating, while at the same time generating a number of specific challenges, among which routing occupies a central place. Routing defines the consistency of interactions between subsystems, affects performance and user experience quality, and forms the basis for further scalability of the system. The article analyzes modern approaches to organizing routing in microfrontend architecture, namely global, local, and hybrid models. It is shown that the global approach provides centralized control and navigation consistency but reduces module autonomy and creates the risk of centralized failures. The local approach, by contrast, guarantees team independence and development speed but leads to route conflicts, issues with synchronizing navigation history, and reduced consistency of the user experience. Hybrid models attempt to combine the advantages of both approaches but leave unresolved the issues of synchronization across different frameworks and SSR/SSG support. Particular attention is paid to key challenges arising in the routing process, including URL conflicts, navigation history coordination, SEO and indexing problems, difficulties with lazy loading of modules, dependence on specific frameworks, UI/UX consistency, performance overhead, limited team resources, and the mismatch between the scale of microfrontends and the needs of small projects. Additionally, the problem of state synchronization between modules, which is critical for ensuring consistency of business logic and data, is examined. The paper proposes practical solutions to address these challenges.