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? - npm or yarn

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 implementation for HTML5 browsers that use HTML5 history API (pushState, replaceState and the popstate event).

4. Why would we use <BrowserRouter /> in our apps? - To keep the UI in sync with the URL.

Route Matchers

5. What does the <Route /> component do? - Perhaps the most important component in React Router to understand and learn to use well. It renders some UI when its path matches the current URL.

6. How does the <Route /> component check whether it should render something? - When the 's path matches the current URL, it renders its children (component)

7. What does the <Switch /> component do? - renders the first child or that matches the location. It's unique from using a bunch of routes in that it renders a route exclusively.

8. How does it decide what to render? - It looks for matching s, and once it finds a matching it will stop looking for matches and renders the child components.

Route Changers

9. What does the <Link /> component do? How does a user interact with it? - provides declarative, accessible navigation around your application.

The user interacts with it by clicking on the Link  component to initiate navigation, which causes the app to check the route and load the requested component without reloading the full page in the browser. 

10. What does the <NavLink /> component do? How does a user interact with it? - is a special version of that adds styling attributes to the rendered element when it matches the current URL.

The user interacts with it by clicking on the Link component, which makes that Link active in the app.

11. What does the <Redirect /> component do? - Navigates to a new location that will override the current location in the history stack.