tldr use usePathname

you cannot do it in server components

sad

so should I make my layout.tsx a client component?

although I can't do that because some children are server components

client component layouts do not make the pages under them client components, so nothing wrong with client component layouts

i get this error

though the best course of action would be to make your nav component client component, then import it to the server component layout

but navbar needs to get stuff like user name, proifle picture etc. i can't make it a client component

well you have to reorganise your components and props such that client components do not import next/headers

or at least, i don't want to

you can get them in the server component layout, then pass them to the client component nav

it only started happening after i made layout.tsx a client component

yes but as i said above, you cannot determine the pathname in server components. using client components is a must there

do you recommend doing that? doesn't layout like, not re-render when u move between tabs

the server component part doesn't render, the client component part does

if your user information changes, revalidateTag/revalidatePath to refresh the server component layout too

is it standard practice now in next14 to make a call to get user data and pass it down to things like navbar?

i'm used to making server calls like this from page.tsxs, but not layout. I generally think of layout as ....something to just hold the layout and nothing more. no business logic/data per se

should I update my priors

yes

well, nothing wrong with fetching data inside layouts

well this is still weird because, ideally I don't want the navbar to be rendered at all given a certain path.

so in the client component navbar do i just do

usePathname()

and then

if (path == "/xyz") {
return null
}
?

i would rather do that in the parent but hmm

yes or you can use route group. but in this case i would do that if return null

@joulev thanks, you're a saviour

hope it's not a bad practice to make API calls like this in layout though

well at least i personally do that. if it somehow becomes a bad practice, you have a fellow developer making the same mistake here