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

You will not be turning this in; it's for your own understanding/learning/benefit 😁

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 via 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 />? It's a wrapping router component that uses the complete URL path. It is the parent component that is used to store all of the other components. It used the HTML5 history API to keep the UI in sinc with the URL.

4. Why would we use <BrowserRouter /> in our apps? It provides the pathways we're going to use to simulate multiple pages, client-side. You can load a top level component for each route. This helps separate concerns in your app and makes the logic/data flow more clear.

Route Matchers

5. What does the <Route /> component do? The componentis a child of the Switch component and and will actually hold the path to the next URL, and will render some UI when a location matches the route’s path
6. How does the <Route /> component check whether it should render something? When the path matches the current URL, it renders its children compenent.
7. What does the <Switch /> component do? Renders the first child or that matches the location. It is unique in that it renders a route exclusively (only one route wins).
8. How does it decide what to render? It takes the first child that matches the location.

Route Changers

9. What does the <Link /> component do? How does a user interact with it? Provides declarative, accessible navigation around your application.
10. What does the <NavLink /> component do? How does a user interact with it? A special version of the that will add styling attributes to the rendered element when it matches the current URL.
11. What does the <Redirect /> component do? Rendering will navigate to a new location. The new location will override the current location in the history stack, like server-side redirects (HTTP 3xx) do.