React-Router is a routing library for SPAs built with React. React-Router version 4 is a complete rewrite and embraces the React philosophy of component-based architecture.
This is from the React-Router documentation (https://reacttraining.com/react-router/)
React-Router can be used wherever React can be applied; that is, React-Router works both in the browser and in the native environment with React Native.
The library is divided into three packages:
- react-router: Common core components for DOM and Native versions
- react-router-dom: Components for use in browser and web applications
- react-router-native: Components for use in native applications built with React Native
The library provides various components that can be used to add routes dynamically to your application. The dynamic routing in React-Router v4 allows you to specify application routes as the user progresses through the application journey. Frameworks such as AngularJS and Express require you to specify the routes upfront, and this routing information is required when the application bootstraps. In fact, the earlier versions of React-Router followed the same paradigm and required the routing configuration to be available upfront.
Apart from dynamic routing and providing fluid navigation in a React application, the library includes various features that are available in traditional websites. These include the following:
- Navigating backward and forward through the application, maintaining the history, and restoring the state of the application
- Rendering appropriate page components when presented with a URL (deep-linking)
- Redirecting the user from one route to the other
- Support for rendering a 404 page when none of the routes match the URL
- Support for hash-based routes and pretty URLs with HTML5 mode
