Introduction to React Router
React Router is a library that allows you to handle routing in single-page applications built with React. It’s a popular open-source library that provides declarative routing for React applications.
Routing is the process of deciding what happens when a user navigates to a particular URL in our web application. By using React Router, we can define different routes and the corresponding components that should be rendered when a user navigates to them.
Getting Started
To get started with React Router, we need to install it as a dependency in our project. We can do this by running the following command in our terminal:
npm install react-router-dom
Once we have installed React Router, we can import it in our application and start defining our routes.
Defining Routes
In a React application, we can define routes using the Route component that is provided by React Router. We can import this component from react-router-dom as follows:
import { Route } from "react-router-dom";
To define a route, we need to specify the path prop and the component prop. The path prop is a string that represents the URL path that should match the route. The component prop is the React component that should be rendered when the route is matched.
In the above example, when a user navigates to the /about path, the About component will be rendered.
We can define as many routes as we need in our application. If we want to define a default route, we can use the exact prop to make sure that the route matches exactly.
In the above example, when a user navigates to the root path (/), the Home component will be rendered.
Navigation
To navigate between different routes, we can use the Link component that is also provided by React Router. We can import this component from react-router-dom as follows:
import { Link } from "react-router-dom";
We can create a link by using the to prop and specifying the path that we want to navigate to.
In the above example, when we click on the About link, we will be navigated to the /about path.
Conclusion
React Router is a popular library that allows us to handle routing in single-page applications built with React. By defining routes and using the Route and Link components provided by React Router, we can create a navigation system that enables users to move between different parts of our application.