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?

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 />? the parent router
4. Why would we use <BrowserRouter /> in our apps?

Route Matchers

5. What does the <Route /> component do? Route looks for a path that matches a component and renders.

6. How does the <Route /> component check whether it should render something? path to

7. What does the <Switch /> component do? 8. How does it decide what to render? The only component with the specific path will be rendered. working with matching urls overall controller of rendering componets based on routes visited Looks through child routes and as soon as the route reaches the first match, it stops the process (if the path matches the route). Need to use exact to be specific with a switch (i think).

Route Changers

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

link takes one property, to and it is set equal to the path. Leave out App so doesnt rerender.Link renders an w
an href behind the scenes. get user to a specific route

10. What does the <NavLink /> component do? How does a user interact with it? Like a Link with styling, add styling attributes if selected Default is active. 1) navlink itself needs to be displayed on the page. style nav button for interaction.

11. What does the <Redirect /> component do? redirect to a new location that is overrided byt the current location in the stack.