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:
-
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)
-
What package do we need to install to use React Router?
npm install 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 that uses the HTML5 history API (pushState, replaceState and the popstate event) to keep your UI in sync with the URL.
- Why would we use
<BrowserRouter />in our apps?
To allow our pages to become more than just a SPA that is showing/hiding components. Though, on the surface, it is doing this exact same thing, it is allowing React to control the url and make the user feel like they are navigating to new pages. When in essence, it is simply changing components into a new view based on the path that we describe for it.
- What does the
<Route />component do?
Render some UI when its path matches the current URL.
- How does the
<Route />component check whether it should render something?
It matches the path that is provided as an attribute. If that path is not exact and matches the path that has been entered, it will render that component. If the path is exact, it will only render the exact verbiage that has been entered as opposed to matching anything that meets the criteria. For EX: (a '/' path has the potential to render multiple components '/news' if the path is not exact because the '/' at the beginning still match).
- What does the
<Switch />component do?
Renders the first child or that matches the location.
- How does it decide what to render?
It will match the path that has been found. Once that path has been found, it will stop attempting to render any other Routes. If a match is not made, it will default to an error or any Route that has been specified for an error catch.
- What does the
<Link />component do? How does a user interact with it?
Provides declarative, accessible navigation around your application. A user can click on a <Link /> as it operates the same as an attribute tag from HTML.
- What does the
<NavLink />component do? How does a user interact with it?
A special version of the that will add styling attributes to the rendered element when it matches the current URL. A user can click on a <NavLink /> as it will operate the same as an <a href=''> attribute tag from HTML, it will keep the styling that has been specified as long as that <NavLink /> is active.
- What does the
<Redirect />component do?
Rendering a will navigate to a new location. The new location will override the current location in the history stack, like server-side redirects (HTTP 3xx) do.