React Router Prework.md

React Router Prework

This gist contains a short assignment I'd like everyone to complete before our formal lesson. The prework involves reading some of the React Router documentation, and will allow us to keep the lesson more hands on.

Instructions

1. Fork this gist
2. On your own copy, go through the listed readings and answer associated questions
3. Comment a link to your forked copy on the original gist

Questions / Readings

Router Overview

React Router is a library that allows us to make our single page React applications mimic the behavior of multipage apps. It provides the ability to use browser history, allowing users to navigate with forward / back buttons and bookmark links to specific views of the app. Most modern sites use some form of routing. React Router exposes this functionality through a series of components. Let's start by looking at the overall structure of an app using router:

1. Take a look at the quick start page of the React Router docs. Take note of the syntax and organization of the page. No worries if this looks unclear right now! (nothing to answer here)

2. What package do we need to install to use React Router? In order to install Rcact -royter we need to run npm install react-router-dom;

Router Components

React Router provides a series of helpful components that allow our apps to use routing. These can be split into roughly 3 categories:

• Routers
• Route Matcher
• Route Changers

Routers

Any code that uses a React-Router-provided component must be wrapped in a router component. There are lots of router components we can use, but we'll focus on one in particular. Let's look into the docs to learn more.

3. What is a <BrowserRouter />? A router tha us
4. Why would we use <BrowserRouter /> in our apps?

To get acess to the API history and allow the user navigate between different paths in our application

Route Matchers

5. What does the <Route /> component do?

Defines the path for the second part of the component which is the <Link/>, by rendering the UI when its path matches the current URL

6. How does the <Route /> component check whether it should render something? My understanding is that <Route/> will thake a prop named path which we can assigned to an specific location, then when the <Link/> tag is triggered the user will be directed to the app's URL and path provided

7. What does the <Switch /> component do? it is a component that wraps all the <Route/> components controling the wya they get read by the <Router>

8. How does it decide what to render?

it looks for the first matching path being given to the <Link/> tag.

Route Changers

9. What does the <Link /> component do? How does a user interact with it?

<Link/> take us to the path defined within the <Route/>

10. What does the <NavLink /> component do? How does a user interact with it?

it allows to control the stylying depending on how the user interacts with the component

11. What does the <Redirect /> component do?

it allows to override paths depending on the state or app condition, mostlikely . will be dependant of a conditional rendering.