What Exactly Is Used For In React Router?

I am new to React learning , and was trying to build an app using react-router-dom. I was able to implement basic routing when I came across the term 'switch'. Can anyone please ex

Solution 1:

Since you are new am going to take a bit more time to explain with examples and also add some few things about it you may want to have handy.

So like Iddler said, Switch is more or less like the "Switch case" condition in any other languages but usually ends with the first match it finds.

<Switch><Routepath="/home"component={Home} /><Routepath="/about"component="{About} />
</Switch>

That is an example of its most basic use. Switch determines the start and end of the block or condition. Each Route checks for the current path. supposing we were working on "www.test.com". All of "www.test.com" is the root "/". So the Route checks for the path after the root. so if you had "www.test.com/home", "/home" comes after the root so the "Home" component will be loaded in our example above and if you had "www.test.com/about" the "About" component is loaded.

Be mindful that you can use any names. the components and paths do not need to be the same.

There are also cases when you might want to use exact to match an exact path. this is useful when you have similar paths. eg "/shop" and "/shop/shoes". using exact ensures Switch matches exact paths and not just the first.

Eg:

<Switch><Routeexactpath="/shop"component={Shop} /><Routeexactpath="shop/shoes"component="{Shoes} />
</Switch>

You can also use <Route... /> without the <Switch>.

Eg:

<Routepath="/home"component={Home} />

so unlike direct component loads where you just load a component like <Home /> Routers work with the URLs.

Lastly, the <Route... /> path can take arrays of url to load same component.

Eg:

<Switch>
    <Route path={[ "/home", "/dashboard", "/house", /start" ]} component={Home} />
    <Route exact path={[ "/about", "/about/management", "/about/branches" ]} component="{About} />
</Switch>

I hope this helps. Let me know if you need clarifications of any sort. :)

UPDATE:

You are not required to write Routers in this same format always. below is another format you could use;

<Router><Switch><Routepath="/home"><Home /></Route><Routepath="/about"><About /></Route></Switch></Router>

There are instances like am in now where you want to be able to handle what shows when a wrong URL is entered. like a 404page. you could use Router without a path. so like a regular switch statement, that becomes your default.

<Switch><Routepath="/home"component={Home} /><Routepath="/about"component="{About} />
    <Route component="{PageNotFound} /></Switch>

Solution 2:

Switch looks through Route's children and renders the first one that matches the current path, once it does it will not look for any other matches.

Solution 3:

The Switch component will work much in the same way as the Router component, meaning we will still have nested Route components that need exact paths, etc. The added functionality of Switch is that it will only render the first matched child. This is really handy when we have nested routes such as the below:

<Switch><Routepath="/accounts/new"component={AddForm} /><Routepath={`/accounts/:accountId`} component={Profile} /></Switch>

Say we put the above code in a component — we would see that both {AddForm} and {Profile} would render, since “/accounts/new” could look like either Route to a Router component. Router components render inclusively of all route matches. The Switch component will render exact matches, and only the exact match. This makes it ideal for these nested scenarios.