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.
- Fork this gist
- On your own copy, go through the listed readings and answer associated questions
- Comment a link to your forked copy on the original gist
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:
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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)
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What package do we need to install to use React Router?
- npm install react-router-dom
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
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.
- What is a
<BrowserRouter />?
- BrowserRouter is a tool that allows us to replicate multi-page applications in one location
- Why would we use
<BrowserRouter />in our apps?
- BrowserRouters uses props to store navigational information that can be used to render information on the dom after user interaction has occured
- What does the
<Route />component do?
- The Route component checks the url path and renders a specific UI if the path matches
- How does the
<Route />component check whether it should render something?
- If the same component is used for multiple routes it will retain state by default, if a unique key prop is provided it will not
- What does the
<Switch />component do?
- The switch component tells router to stop searching for a url match to render once it finds a match
- How does it decide what to render?
- The first child that matches the url path
- What does the
<Link />component do? How does a user interact with it?
- A link component links from one route path to another, and can send important information along with it. A user clicks to interact with it
- What does the
<NavLink />component do? How does a user interact with it?
- A special link that allows styling to be provided for the link destination
- What does the
<Redirect />component do?
- It will redirect to a new path and override the current path in the history stack