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 /> uses a base (regualr) URL for all of the different routes/ different pages of a react app. If there is a another route it needs to use the base URL then a / and the route. This is to managed the client side URL.

4. Why would we use <BrowserRouter /> in our apps? We use <BrowserRouter /> in our apps because it looks the best in terms of making sure the client knows the main website page they are on. More user friendly.

Route Matchers

5. What does the <Route /> component do? The <Route /> component renders a UI that matches with the current URL that the user has entered.

6. How does the <Route /> component check whether it should render something? The <Route /> component can check by having a property called path that indicates what url path to render.

7. What does the <Switch /> component do? A <Switch /> can contain multiple routes like an array.

8. How does it decide what to render? It will look into all the children elements and try to find a match with the current URL.

Route Changers

9. What does the <Link /> component do? How does a user interact with it? A <Link /> component acts like a click and when that element is clicked it it will reroute to that path/URL stated.

10. What does the <NavLink /> component do? How does a user interact with it? A <NavLink /> component does everying a <Link /> component does but adds styling attributes to the rendered path/URL.

11. What does the <Redirect /> component do? A <Redirect />components sends it to the right path/URL, so this new path overrides the old one path.