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?
- React router.
npm instal 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 />?
allows us to wrap our App component, allowing us to direct the router to whatever path we want rendered. This allows for our react app to behave similarly to a website following links and being redirected to other pages.
- Why would we use
<BrowserRouter />in our apps?
Using a allows the UX to be similar to a site which has multiple pages.
- What does the
<Route />component do?
The component acts similarly to a conditional in a switch statement, redirecting our render method to the correct components/content, and allowing the URL to be updated accordingly.
- How does the
<Route />component check whether it should render something?
Determines if the Route has a matching URL.
- What does the
<Switch />component do?
The component behaves similarly to a regular JS switch statement, in that every within it can be seen as a conditional check, so it will only render the Route which matches the condiitonal (URL).
- How does it decide what to render?
If the URL conditions match.
- What does the
<Link />component do? How does a user interact with it?
The component behaves simliarly to regular tages, in that it will bring you to the page you are looking for. However within a router, the tag is then sent to the component, which will then determine the correct path (route) to be rendered.
- What does the
<NavLink />component do? How does a user interact with it?
A compenent that allows styling when active.
- What does the
<Redirect />component do?
Forces user navigation (will redirect user to whatever URL entered in "to" prop.