2001 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?

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.

1. What is a <BrowserRouter />?

   • regulates URL paths. they are clean and organized, but require the server to be carefully configured.

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

   • It keeps the app URL path looking good and tidy.

Route Matchers

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

   • It directs to the corresponding UI when calls for a new URL path

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

   • It checks the path and if that path matches the URL path then route will render the new page/url path.

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

   • It searches through all the components and when it finds a match it renders that route.

6. How does it decide what to render?

   • It will render the first match it finds as the new URL path. this is why it is important to name your routes differently and specifically.

Route Changers

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

   • it creates an achor tag and redirects the user to the url path in the tag

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

   • its a special type of that can style itself as “active” when its to prop matches the current location.

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

   • any time that you want to force navigation, you can use . When a renders, it will navigate using its to prop.