React Components Basics Lab

Learning Goals

  • Write basic React components
  • Return one React component from another component

Instructions

In the labs throughout this section, we'll be working on building a small portfolio site in React.

Our goal for the first lesson is to get the basic components for our app — the <Navbar>, <Home>, and <About> components — to be returned from the <App> component.

Once we're done, we should get something like this:

app demo

For this lab, we will be rendering a few children components in our top-most component: App. All of our work will be done in src/components/App.js. The rest of the files shouldn't need any changes.

To set up the app and run it in the browser, run:

$ npm install
$ npm start

To start, work on getting the app to match the screenshot above. Then, open up a second terminal (open to the same directory), and run learn test or npm test to check your work.

Deliverables

  • Two components, <Navbar> and <Home>, are already defined in the App.js file. Add both of these components as child components of <App> by including them in the return statement for the App function.

  • Create a third component, <About>. The <About> component should also be a child component of <App>.

    • The <About> component should return a <div> with an id of about. To match the screenshot, the div should contain an <h2> element with the text "About." However, as long as it has an id of about, it will pass the test!

Hint: If you're stuck, try using the screen.debug method in the test file to see what DOM elements are being returned by your <App> component. If you still need help, this lab (and others) have a solution branch on GitHub where you can see one possible solution to this lesson.

Resources