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?

• We need to install the 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 that uses regular URL paths. It uses HTML5 history API to keep the UI in sync with the URL.

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

• We would use BrowserRouter in our apps so that we can serve the same page of all URLs that are managed on the client-side by React Router.

Route Matchers

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

• The Route component renders some UI when its path matches the current URL.

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

• The Route component checks if an element's path matches the current URL. It really only matches the beginning of the URL and not the whole thing unless you use Route Exact. If it does match, then the route is rendered.

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

• The Switch component renders the first child Route or it will Redirect to an element that matches the location.

8. How does it decide what to render?

• It searches through the children Route elements to find a path that matches the current URL. It will render that route if it is a match and ignore all the others.

Route Changers

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

• Link components create links in the application. Once a user interacts with the link, the webpage will render a route that matches the element's path and allow the user to see/interact with the newly displayed webpage.

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

• A NavLink component can style itself as 'active' when its to prop matches the current location. It allows syling attributes to be added to the rendered element when it matches the current URL.

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

• The Redirect component is a way to force navigation to a new location. The new location will override the current location in the history stack. This is similar to server-side redirects (300 status codes).