Fixing Anonymous Chat After i18n URL Changes

Added i18n URL routing to my tools and anonymous chat pages. Everything worked in the build, but when I tested the chat - infinite loading. “연결 준비중…” forever.

The symptoms

The anonymous chat page at /en/anonymous-chat/ wouldn’t connect. Just sat there spinning. No obvious errors at first.

What I thought the problem was

I assumed the i18n changes broke something. Found two legit issues:

1. Share link missing language prefix - Chat was generating /anonymous-chat#roomId instead of /en/anonymous-chat#roomId
2. Redirect losing the hash - When redirecting from /anonymous-chat to /{lang}/anonymous-chat, the #roomId was getting dropped

Fixed both:

// Before
const url = `${window.location.origin}/anonymous-chat#${currentRoomId}`;

// After - preserve current path (includes language)
const url = `${window.location.origin}${window.location.pathname}#${currentRoomId}`;

And for the redirect:

// Before
window.location.replace('/' + lang + '/anonymous-chat');

// After - preserve hash
window.location.replace('/' + lang + '/anonymous-chat' + window.location.hash);

The actual problem

After fixing those issues, still not working. Opened browser console:

Uncaught TypeError: jsxDEV is not a function
Failed to load resource: 504 (Outdated Optimize Dep)

Classic Vite cache issue. The Outdated Optimize Dep error is the giveaway.

The fix

rm -rf node_modules/.vite
npm run dev

That’s it. Chat connected immediately.

Lesson learned

When debugging after big changes, check the browser console first. I spent time analyzing code when the actual problem was stale cache. The i18n changes were fine - Vite just needed its cache cleared.

The URL fixes I made were still valid improvements though. Share links now properly include the language prefix, and redirects preserve room IDs.