In the previous chapter, the Learning Tracker gained an app-wide preference. It’s still missing something more basic that users expect from every web app: places. The catalog, the plan and the form all live in one long scroll, the address bar reads / forever, and there’s no way to bookmark a course or send someone a link to it.
Client-side routing fixes that. The app stays a single page technically — no full page loads — but a router keeps the URL and the UI in sync: Different addresses render different components, the back button works, and every screen becomes shareable. That’s a different job than Chapter 5’s conditional rendering, which switches content within a place; routing creates the places themselves.
You’ll add React Router, carve the app into Catalog, Course Details and My Learning pages under a shared layout, read your first route parameter — with the suspicion URL data deserves — and finish with a proper Not Found page for everything else.
Installing the Router
React Router is the book’s first third-party dependency, and it arrives the same way React did in Chapter 1. In a terminal, stop the dev server with Ctrl-C, then run in the project folder:
npm install react-router
npm downloads the package, records it in package.json — you’ll see "react-router": "^8.2.0" or newer among the dependencies — and locks the exact version. Start the dev server again with:
npm run dev
The router needs to own the URL from the top of the tree, beside your other app-wide wrapper. In src/main.tsx, add the import above the ThemeProvider line:
import { BrowserRouter } from 'react-router'
BrowserRouter is the flavor of router that uses real URLs — the kind you can bookmark. Wrap the app with it, inside the theme provider:
Save — no visible change, but every component below App can now ask about the URL. Here’s the destination structure, worth seeing before building it:
The route tree: one layout wrapping four pages, each owning an address pattern.
Read it top-down. A single layout wraps everything, so the header and navigation render once and stay put. Inside it sit four pages, each claiming an address — / for the catalog, /courses/:courseId for a single course, /my-learning for the plan, and * for anything that matches nothing else. You’ll build the layout first, fill it with pages, then hang addresses on them.
Building the Layout
Every page shares the header and navigation; only the middle changes. Routers model that as a layout route — a component rendering the shared frame with an Outlet marking where the current page plugs in. Create src/components/Layout.tsx:
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Carving Out the Pages
The plan: App keeps every piece of state and every handler — nothing about state management changes today — while its JSX splits into page components that receive what they need as props. Start with the simplest. Create a folder src/pages with NotFoundPage.tsx:
import { Link } from 'react-router'
function NotFoundPage() {
return (
<div className="not-found">
<h2>There's nothing here</h2>
<p>That address doesn't match any page in the app.</p>
<Link to="/">Back to the catalog</Link>
</div>
)
}
export default NotFoundPage
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Declaring the Routes
Time to wire addresses to pages. In src/App.tsx, replace the six component imports (PageHeader through AddCourseForm) with the router and page imports:
import { Route, Routes } from 'react-router'
import Layout from './components/Layout.tsx'
import CatalogPage from './pages/CatalogPage.tsx'
import CourseDetailsPage from './pages/CourseDetailsPage.tsx'
import MyLearningPage from './pages/MyLearningPage.tsx'
import NotFoundPage from './pages/NotFoundPage.tsx'
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Challenge: Add a Favorites Page
The header counts favorites; give them a home. Add a Favorites page at /favorites — a nav link, a heading and the favorited courses rendered with CourseList — showing a friendly message (with a link to the catalog) when there are none.
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Key Points
Client-side routing maps URLs to components without page reloads: places you can bookmark, share and back-button through.
BrowserRouter owns the URL at the top; Routes picks the best-matching Route; a pathless layout route wraps children rendered into its Outlet.
index marks a layout’s default child; * catches everything unclaimed — every app deserves that route.
Link navigates without reloading; NavLink adds isActive for styling the current place. Buttons act, links go — still.
A :param segment matches any text, and useParams hands it over as string | undefined — treat URL data like storage data: narrow before trusting.
Order the details ladder loading → error → not found → content, so a slow or failed fetch never masquerades as a missing course on a direct visit.
Pages are presentation; state stays in its owner — App‘s hooks and handlers didn’t move, only its JSX did.
Where to Go From Here?
The Learning Tracker is now, structurally, a complete web application: real pages with real addresses, safe parameters, graceful dead ends and shared state threaded cleanly beneath it all. Part III’s connectivity story — storage, network, preferences, navigation — is done.
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