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 ($ npm install --save 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 />?

• This is a router that uses regular URL paths. Your web server needs to serve the same page at all URLs that are managed client-side by React Router.
• The parent component that is used to store all of your <Route> components

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

• Allows your to build a single-page web application with navigation

Route Matchers

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

• This is a matching component.
• A conditionally shown component based on matching a path to a URL

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

• If the matches the beginning of the URL, not the whole thing, the <Route> will render.
• So a <Route path="/"> will always match the URL.

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

• This is a matching component.
• Returns only the first matching route rather than all matchng routes

8. How does it decide what to render?

• <Switch> will search through its children <Route> elements to find one whose path matches the current URL. When it finds one, it renders that <Route> and ignores all others. If no <Route> matches, the <Switch> renders nothing (null).

Route Changers

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

• <Link> is used to create links in your application
• Wherever you render a <Link>, an anchor <a> will be rendered in your HTML document.

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

• A special type of <Link> that can style itself as “active” when its to prop matches the current location.

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

• Any time that you want to force navigation, you can render a <Redirect>. When a <Redirect> renders, it will navigate using its to prop.