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?

npm install 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 sub-class?/high-level version of <rRouter /> that uses HTML5 history API to keep the UI in sync with the URL

4. Why would we use <BrowserRouter /> in our apps? Use be able to use the history property to cause a render within the React app to change path to where you want to go. - Synchronize last element in history array to desired path

Route Matchers

5. What does the <Route /> component do?: render some UI when its path matches the current URL a user is on

6. How does the <Route /> component check whether it should render something? Built in render method on the Route component triggers when the pathname matches the current location (ideally path prop)

7. What does the <Switch /> component do? It renders the first child component (Route or Redirect) that matches the location/path

   • Switch renders a route exclusively vs Route renders inclusively confused on this

8. How does it decide what to render? When it hits the first Route nested (child) that matches the path

Route Changers

9. What does the <Link /> component do? How does a user interact with it? Link provides the syntax for navigation through the app. Users interact with links like they would an <a>/anchor tag. This allows for accessibility to be hardwired into React (?)

10. What does the <NavLink /> component do? How does a user interact with it? This is a special kind of Link that adds styling attributes like font weight, color, size, etc to the rendered element when it matches the current URL

11. What does the <Redirect /> component do? - Navigate to a new location by overriding the current location in the history stack (how HTTP 3xx - server side re-directs work)