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 />?
- The parent component that is used to store all of your components
- Uses the HTML5 history API to keep the UI in sync with the URL.
- Why would we use
<BrowserRouter />in our apps?
- Because it's the parent Route component so it can store our child Route components
- That's why the App component is usually wrapped in a Browser Router in the index.js file
- What does the
<Route />component do?
- Renders the UI when its path matches the current URL
- How does the
<Route />component check whether it should render something?
- If the path matches the URL, it renders something
- What does the
<Switch />component do?
- Renders the first child or that matches the location
- is unique in that it renders a route exclusively
- How does it decide what to render?
- It picks the first match but you have to specify the exact path because switch will match / and /something as the same thing
- What does the
<Link />component do? How does a user interact with it?
- Used to navigate to an existing route that is defined using the component
- The user interacts with it by click on whatever is linked and then is taken to a new page
- What does the
<NavLink />component do? How does a user interact with it?
- Used to define and design a declarative navigation around an application
- Comes with additional styling attributes that allow us to stylize and differentiate the link that is “active”
- A user interacts the same way they do with Link, except the element can visually differentiate the link that matches url
- What does the
<Redirect />component do?
- Will navigate to a new location
- The new location will override the current location
- Redirects can happen if you have path names change but the old url still routes to the new path