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:
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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?
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 />?
It's a type of <Router> component that uses the HTML5 history API to keep the UI in sync with the URL. It will be a wrapper around our <Route /> componenets.
- Why would we use
<BrowserRouter />in our apps?
It will make our single-page apps look and feel like multi-page apps with URLs that reflect different parts of the app.
- What does the
<Route />component do?
It contains the instructions for which component(s) of the UI should render given different URLs.
- How does the
<Route />component check whether it should render something?
It compares the contents of its path property against the URL in the address bar.
- What does the
<Switch />component do?
It allows only one of its <Route /> children to render.
- How does it decide what to render?
It renders the first of its children whose <Route /> property path matches the URL in the address bar.
- What does the
<Link />component do? How does a user interact with it?
It holds a DOM element and makes that element a clickable link that takes the user to the location specificed in the to="..." property.
- What does the
<NavLink />component do? How does a user interact with it?
It works just like a regular <Link /> except that it has an activeStyle property that can give the enclosed DOM element special styling when the <NavLink /> is active (i.e., when it matches the current URL).
- What does the
<Redirect />component do?
It redirects the user to a different URL. That is, the user may type one thing in the address bar, and if that URL leads to a <Redirect /> component, the user will be sent instead to a URL matching the path in the to property of the <Redirect />.