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?

• 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 />?

• This is a router that uses the HTML5 history API

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

• To keep your UI in sync with the URL.

Route Matchers

5. What does the <Route /> component do?

• This component allows you to difine the path where a component should render.

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

• It will check to see that the url matches, and renders that path if it does.

7. What does the <Switch /> component do?

• It will render one <Route /> by checking that the path matches the current URL. <Switch /> contains <Route />'s, which depreciate from most to least specific routs.

8. How does it decide what to render?

• It will render once the beginning of the URL matches.

Route Changers

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

• This allows you to create a link that the user can click on. Once clicked the URL will change to the path declared in the to prop.

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

• The <NavLink /> is related to the <Link />, in that if the to prop matches, then the <NavLink /> is styled to active.

11. What does the <Redirect /> component do?

• Do to a specified error, the <Redirect /> will redirect the user to the path specified by the to prop.