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?

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 />?

Browser Router is a router component that use regular url paths to switch between pages.

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

We would want to use Browser Router because all our URL's are connected to the same web server.

Route Matchers

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

Route components hold specific urls to be rendered

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

Route components URL's are checked to see if they match the current url

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

Switch components check their children Routes to see if they match the current url.

8. How does it decide what to render?

If the route compoent matches the current url

Route Changers

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

A link component renders an anchor tag with a corrosponding href. A user interacts with it like they would interact with a link

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

The NAvlink compnent acts like a link component with the added caveat that it can style itself as active it props match the currect location.

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

The Redirect component forces a user to go to a specific location.