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?

• 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 />?

• a <BrowserRouter /> is a primary component of React Router that stores the URL paths for client-side routing.

4. Why would we use <BrowserRouter /> in our apps?

• <BrowserRouter /> uses the HTML history to sync the UI with the app's state.

Route Matchers

5. What does the <Route /> component do?

• <Route />renders content whose path matches the current URL.

6. How does the <Route /> component check whether it should render something?

• The first <Route /> whose path matches the current URL will render.

7. What does the <Switch /> component do?

• It is the component responsible for rendering child <Route /> components.

8. How does it decide what to render?
   • Whichever child <Route /> element holds a path that matches the current URL will be rendered.

Route Changers

9. What does the <Link /> component do? How does a user interact with it?

• <Link /> provides declarative, accessible navigation around the application.
• A user can interact with it through click events.

10. What does the <NavLink /> component do? How does a user interact with it?

• <NavLink /> is a type of <Link /> component that can adding styling attributes to the rendered element whose path matches the current URL.
• Like a <Link /> component, a user can interact with a <NavLink /> component through click events.

11. What does the <Redirect /> component do?

• <Redirect /> navigates the user to a new location, overriding the current location in the history stack, comparable to redirects seen on the server-side.