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? 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 component that is the core of a React Router app. <BrowserRouter /> produces the best-looking urls but requires additional configuration to get set up.

4. Why would we use <BrowserRouter /> in our apps?
   It is the component that makes the URLs for each individual "page."

Route Matchers

5. What does the <Route /> component do?
   It determines what pages to load based on the path prop.

6. How does the <Route /> component check whether it should render something?
   It is passed a prop called "path" which includes the portion of a URL. If the current URL matches the path prop, it will render that route.

7. What does the <Switch /> component do?
   It is similar to a JS switch. It evaluates the current URL and determines which Route to render based on it's path prop.

8. How does it decide what to render?
   By comparing the current url to the route options that our children of the switch.

Route Changers

9. What does the <Link /> component do? How does a user interact with it?
   It acts as a link to other locations. User click it like any other link.

10. What does the <NavLink /> component do? How does a user interact with it?
    It is a link that have active styling when it's prop matches the current URL.

11. What does the <Redirect /> component do?
    It will force the page to render the location held within its prop.