---
title: React Router
---
## React Router

### Installation

React Router has been broken into three packages: `react-router`, `react-router-dom`, and `react-router-native`.

You should almost never have to install react-router directly. That package provides the core routing components and functions for React Router applications. The other two provide environment specific (browser and react-native) components, but they both also re-export all of react-router's exports.

We are building a website (something that will be run in browsers), so we will install react-router-dom.

`npm install --save react-router-dom`

### The Router
When starting a new project, you need to determine which type of router to use. For browser based projects, there are <BrowserRouter> and <HashRouter> components. The `<BrowserRouter>` should be used when you have a server that will handle dynamic requests (knows how to respond to any possible URI), while the <HashRouter> should be used for static websites (where the server can only respond to requests for files that it knows about).

Usually it is preferable to use a `<BrowserRouter>`, but if your website will be hosted on a server that only serves static files, then the `<HashRouter>` is a good solution.

For our project, we will assume that the website will be backed by a dynamic server, so our router component of choice is the `<BrowserRouter>`.

### Import Statement
```javascript

import { BrowserRouter as Router, Switch, Route, Link } from 'react-router-dom';

```

### IndexRoute and Links
Now, let’s add navigation to get us between pages.

To do this, we will be using the `<Link>` component. `<Link>` is similar to using an html anchor tag.

From the docs:

The primary way to allow users to navigate around your application. <Link> will render a fully accessible anchor tag with the proper href.
To do this, let’s first create a Nav component. Our Nav component will contain `<Link>` components, and will look like this:

```javascript

const Nav = () => (
  <div>
    <Link to='/'>Home</Link>
    <Link to='/address'>Address</Link>
  </div>
)
```

### NavLink, Redirect and Programmatic redirects
In addition to using `<Link>` for navigating around your application, `<NavLink>` is yet another approach. 
  
The difference between `<Link>` and `<NavLink>` is that, if you inspect the element with `<NavLink>` you will find a class set to **active**. This is useful when you would like to apply some custom styles to your active links.

```javascript
import { NavLink } from 'react-router-dom';

const Nav = () => (
  <div>
    <NavLink to='/'>Dashboard</NavLink>
    <NavLink to='/services'>Services</NavLink>
  </div>
)
```

`<Redirect>` tag from `react-router-dom` is super useful in cases where you want to redirect your users to certain parts of your application. For example, you would like the users to see the blog contents component only when they have logged in and not otherwise. You can set it up like this:

```javascript
import { Redirect } from 'react-router'

<Route exact path="/" render={() => (
  loggedIn ? (
    <Redirect to="/blogContents"/>
  ) : (
    <SignUp/>
  )
)}/>
```

React also provides `programmatic redirects`. It means you can programmatically redirect users to a url in your app based on a click of a button or a form submission. For any component the react router loads, it attaches some extra information to the `props` object which can be inspected in the console. One important property is the `history` property which keeps track of history and you can push a user to another location by using this property. For example:

```javascript
const Home = (props) => {
  console.log(props); // This will show you the property on props object the router provides automatically
  setTimeout(() => {
    props.history.push('/about'); // This will redirect the user from "home" component to "about" component after 3 sec 
  }, 3000)
}
```

### React Router with redux

The main thing that many developers face is how to integrate react router with redux to pass down both the store as well as the props from the browser router to enhance the functionality of the component.

A basic example is as follows:

```jsx
  const Root = ({store}) => (
  <Provider store={store}>
    <Router>
      <Route path="/" component={App} />
      {/* Making a router in the main App.js file will facilitate the passing of props from the Provider and the Router  */}
   </Router>
   </Provider>
)
```

### Resources
* [Redux-with-react Router](https://redux.js.org/advanced/usagewithreactrouter)