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 <BrowserRouter /> is a router component that uses regular URL paths and serves the same page at all URLs that are managed client-side by React Router.

4. Why would we use <BrowserRouter /> in our apps? We use <BrowserRouter /> to keep our UI in sync with the URL.

Route Matchers

5. What does the <Route /> component do? The <Route /> component is a route matching component that renders some UI when a location matches the route's path.

6. How does the <Route /> component check whether it should render something? Route elements are rendered when its path matches the current URL.

7. What does the <Switch /> component do? The <Switch /> component renders the first child <Route> that matches the location.

8. How does it decide what to render? If the current URL matches the route path.

Route Changers

9. What does the <Link /> component do? How does a user interact with it? The <Link /> component provides navigation around your application through links. Wherever you render a <Link>, an anchor <a> is rendered in your HTML document. With links, a user can click around through the app and be taken to different pages.

10. What does the <NavLink /> component do? How does a user interact with it? The <NavLink /> component is a special type of <Link> that adds styling attributes to the rendered element when it matches the current URL.

11. What does the <Redirect /> component do? The <Redirect /> component forces navigation to a new location. When a <Redirect> renders, it navigates using its to prop.