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Last active May 13, 2020 13:51
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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? It looks like we need to install react-router-dom to use the React Router.

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.

  1. What is a <BrowserRouter />? BroswerRouter wraps our entire app in the index.js. It uses regular URL paths that look good. The server and router need to use the same URLs though.

  2. Why would we use <BrowserRouter /> in our apps? We use it to enable React Router...which allows us to navigate different pages/views more easily.

Route Matchers

  1. What does the <Route /> component do? Will render a certain page/component if a path is matched.

  2. How does the <Route /> component check whether it should render something? It checks the URL to see if it matches its path.

  3. What does the <Switch /> component do? It searches through its children Route elements to find one whose path matches the current URL.

  4. How does it decide what to render? It renders the first one it finds and ignores the rest.

Route Changers

  1. What does the <Link /> component do? How does a user interact with it? The Link inserts an anchor to link to the specified page/view.

  2. What does the <NavLink /> component do? How does a user interact with it? It is a special type of Link that provides some styling through classNames.

  3. What does the <Redirect /> component do? It helps force navigation. Like if a user was trying to go to a part of the application they are not allowed it could force them back to the home page.

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