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JavaScript React Router 4 Basics Navigating, Nesting and Redirecting Routes Navigating Between Routes

Kayla Johnson
Kayla Johnson
482 Points

What's the difference between putting imported elements in curly braces and not?

I saw in the video that we use import React from 'react'; And similarly when we're importing Components into other files, that works the same way. But import Link from 'react-router-dom'; does not work. It has to be import { Link } from 'react-router-dom';

Why is that? At first I thought {} were to put multiple imports at once like we did previously. But without them I get this: 45:12-16 "export 'default' (imported as 'Link') was not found in 'react-router-dom'

Hi there, was asking this question myself many times and the following link has a thorough and easily comprehensive approach https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31096597/using-brackets-with-javascript-import-syntax It explains when and how to use curly braces while importing. Thank God, someone took time to explain it so good.

3 Answers

1.To import only the Component from react you would have to do "import { Component } from 'react' ", and now you can use the component just like normal.

  1. To import the entire react module you would do " import React from 'react' ", and now you can access the component inside React or any other component like so "React.Component". Using "import React, { Component } from 'react' ". you are importing both the entire React module and a specific component of that module. We use the {} syntax when we need only certain things inside a module such as a variable, a function, a class or even another module from a large library (fine amount of modules composed to work to gather) such as React.

see here for examples: https://codesandbox.io/s/vy2y4jnwx0

A file /module can export multiple functions/ methods. When you import a file like this " import file from 'some module ' ", you import the entire file and its components/methods. And now you can access the components inside the file by doing "file.method name". or you can import only a specific method/function that's inside that file by doing
"import { method } from file". And now you can just use that method like your own method.

Kayla Johnson
Kayla Johnson
482 Points

So when I say import React, { Component } from 'react'; it's only importing the Component module from React? And without { Component } it's importing all of the react.js file?

I still don't understand why I can't do import React, Component from 'react'; why does Component have to be in { }

Maybe this helps.

import {Link} from 'react-router';

imports a named export from react-router, i.e. something like

export const Link = 42;

Source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33524696/es6-destructuring-and-module-imports