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
- uses HTML5 history API to store and keep your UI in sync with the URL
- Why would we use
<BrowserRouter />in our apps?
- We could use it as a way to handle different pages and to move between them
- What does the
<Route />component do?
- it find a component with a similar "path" to render the correct page.
- renders the component when the URL matches the route
- How does the
<Route />component check whether it should render something?
- It checks the first child that matches the URL and then renders that child
- What does the
<Switch />component do?
- The switch makes sure that the first route inside of it that matches is rendered and then it stops there.
- How does it decide what to render?
- It renders the first route that matches and makes sure not to render any thing else
- What does the
<Link />component do? How does a user interact with it?
- lets us create and place links in our application to switch between pages
- I think the user interacts with it by clicking a button like "contact us" and then is taken to that page by the link.
- What does the
<NavLink />component do? How does a user interact with it?
- helps to specify which links in a nav bar are active
- I have done research on this and I am still unclear to how the user interacts with this one
- What does the
<Redirect />component do?
- Navigates to a new location, the new location will override the current location in the history stack.