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

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 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
  • The class that is extended from
• Route Matcher
  • A match object contains information about how a matched the URL.
• 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 that uses the HTML5 history API (pushState, replaceState and the popstate event) to keep your UI in sync with the URL

4. Why would we use <BrowserRouter /> in our apps? We want to use BrowswerRouter because it allows for a more seamless transition from one page in the application to the next, which is important for the user's experience. This seamless transition is needed since these applications are connecting a front-end and a back-end (API) and there can be a lag or a white screen that can come up in the moments of transition from one page view to the next.

Route Matchers

5. What does the <Route /> component do? The Route component is perhaps the most important component in React Router to understand and learn to use well. Its most basic responsibility is to render some UI when its path matches the current URL.6. How does the <Route /> component check whether it should render something?

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

7. How does it decide what to render?

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 a 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.