2006 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? 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 browser router is a router tag that holds browser history.

4. Why would we use <BrowserRouter /> in our apps? We would use it in order to be able to use the forward and back buttons.

Route Matchers

5. What does the <Route /> component do? It renders UI when its path matches the current URL path.
6. How does the <Route /> component check whether it should render something? If its path matches the current URL path, it will render.
7. What does the <Switch /> component do? The switch renders the first child Route that matches the location path.
8. How does it decide what to render? It renders the first child Route that matches the location path.

Route Changers

9. What does the <Link /> component do? How does a user interact with it? The Link component navigates to a specific path when action is taken by the user. The user will interact with a click action.

10. What does the <NavLink /> component do? How does a user interact with it? The Nav Link component is a version of Link that adds styling attributes to the rendered element when it matches the current URL. It basically makes it so that when clicked it has a certain style and is marked "active". The user interacts with a click action

11. What does the <Redirect /> component do? Redirect components will navigate to a new location and override the current location in the history stack.