This gist contains a short assignment we'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.
- Fork this gist
- 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 😁
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:
Read through this guide.
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
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.
- What is a
<BrowserRouter />? -Uses the HTML5 history API (pushState, replaceState and the popstate event) to keep your UI in sync with the URL.
- What does the
<Route />component do? -Any component passed as a child to is called a “Route Component”. There are three types of props for Route Components. -An object or Route Element typically with a shape of { path, element } or . The path is a path pattern. When the path pattern matches the current URL, the element will be rendered. - What does the
<Routes />component do? -The component recurses through its props.children, strips their props, and generates an object like this: - What does the
<Outlet />component do?
- A component that renders the next match in a set of matches.
- What does the
<Link />component do? How does a user interact with it? This is the primary means of navigation. Rendering a allows the user to change the URL when they click it. - 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.