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? To use React Router, first create a project using the create-react-app, then using npm install to add the react-router-dom package.

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 browser router is a router that acts as a container for a component that will have different routes depending on the current url.
4. Why would we use <BrowserRouter /> in our apps? For one, because it uses regular url paths for routes unlike hash router which would throw a /#/ before your route path, also because it provides a clean efficient way to switch between page views while keeping the url up to date.

Route Matchers

5. What does the <Route /> component do? It renders its assigned component at any given point when the url matches the path listed in that route.

6. How does the <Route /> component check whether it should render something? It holds a string that represents its path and if that path matches the current url, it renders.

7. What does the <Switch /> component do? The switch component contains route children of which, it only renders the first route thats path matches the current url.

8. How does it decide what to render? It searches through it's route childrens path whenever the url changes, rendering the component of the first route it finds that has a path matching that of the current URL.

Route Changers

9. What does the <Link /> component do? How does a user interact with it? The link component acts as a container for whatever its contents may be, changing the url to be that of the link's to attribute whenver it is clicked on.
10. What does the <NavLink /> component do? How does a user interact with it? The navlink provides a styled version of a link, highlighting which link is currently active on the page, user interacts the same as they would with a normal link component.
11. What does the <Redirect /> component do? The Redirect component when rendered, changes the active url to that given in the path, not fired by user action but by developer placement.