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 />?
A browser router stores the URL and communicates with the server. It uses regular URL paths and must be configured correctly in order to communicate with your server.
- Why would we use
<BrowserRouter />in our apps?
To mimic multipage apps and communicate with a server.
- What does the
<Route />component do?
The Route componenet handles different "pages". When a user clicks on a particular link, the Router will match the link to the corresponding page and display it in the URL
- How does the
<Route />component check whether it should render something?
It uses Switch to match the link to a child component.
- What does the
<Switch />component do?
The Switch component searches through child Router elements looking for a match, and renders only the one that matches and not others. Specific URL paths should come first in the switch, and more general ones later to ensure the right thing is rendered.
- How does it decide what to render?
By matching the path and ignoring everything else.
- What does the
<Link />component do? How does a user interact with it?
The link component makes links and anchors it in the app, it allows a user to click on it and the router will match the thing clicked with the URL path it corresponds to, bringing the user to that page.
- What does the
<NavLink />component do? How does a user interact with it?
The NavLink is a special type of link that can be set to “active” when the prop passed in matches the current URL.
- What does the
<Redirect />component do?
The redirect component forces a redirect, or a change in navigation.