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.
- Fork this gist
- On your own copy, go through the listed readings and answer associated questions
- Comment a link to your forked copy on the original gist
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:
-
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 (package we need to install)
- import {BrowswerRouter as Router, Switch, Route, Link} from '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 />?
- A Router component extended from the Router Class
- uses regular URL paths
- Uses the HTML5 history API (pushState, replaceState and the popstate event) to keep your UI in sync with the URL.
- Browser Routing is used for doing client Side Routing with URL segments.You can Load the top level component for each route.
- Why would we use
<BrowserRouter />in our apps?
- Users can bookmark URLS, use the back and forward button, and easily share contnet from the page in the application
- It helps us to seprate concerns in your app that makes the logical and data flow more clear
- Will mimic functionality of a multi-page application for a single page application
- What does the
<Route />component do?
- Its most basic responsibility is to render some UI when its path matches the current URL.
- How does the
<Route />component check whether it should render something?
- When the location (path) of the Route component matches the current URL, it's children will render to the UI
- What does the
<Switch />component do?
- Switch renders the first child
<Route>or<Redirect>that matches the location/path, it renders exclusively versus<Route>which renders inclusively
- How does it decide what to render?
- Switch will look at it's children Routes and find the one that matches the location and will only render that Route
- What does the
<Link />component do? How does a user interact with it?
- Provides declarative, accessible navigation around your application.
- can provide different values such as string, obj, function , boolean..etc for paths
- What does the
<NavLink />component do? How does a user interact with it?
- a special version of the
<Link>component that will add styling attributes to the rendered element when it matches the current URL - A user interacts with it through navigational links on the application and depending on the setup, the navigational link will be styled differently if it is the active link (the user is on that page for example)
- What does the
<Redirect />component do?
- Rendering a
<Redirect>will navigate to a new location. The new location will override the current location in the history stack.