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? npm install 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 />? <BrowserRouter /> is a <Router /> that uses the HTML5 history API (pushState, replaceState and the popstate event) to keep your UI in sync with the URL.

4. Why would we use <BrowserRouter /> in our apps? <BrowswerRouter /> is used to provide different bookmarks for pages in a web application. If a user wanted to return to a specific page in the app, they could bookmark it.

Route Matchers

5. What does the <Route /> component do? <Route /> sets a certain URL pathway for a component

6. How does the <Route /> component check whether it should render something? The component will check to see if the pathway matches before rendering the component

7. What does the <Switch /> component do? <Switch /> will look through the child components within it and return the first one that matches the current URL.

8. How does it decide what to render? It looks for the first <Route> path that matches the URL.

Route Changers

9. What does the <Link /> component do? How does a user interact with it? The <Link /> component allows the user to click on a certain text or button on the page and be directed to a specified pathway

10. What does the <NavLink /> component do? How does a user interact with it? <NavLink /> is similar to <Link /> but it comes with an "active" state that can be toggled on an off with each click.

11. What does the <Redirect /> component do? <Redirect /> will navigate to a new location that overrides the current location in the history stack. This is good for if a user accidentally clicks on an unvailable link or if the link isn't working