React is the most popular front-end JavaScript library in the field of web development. It is used by large, established companies and newly-minted startups alike (Netflix, Airbnb, Instagram, and the New York Times, to name a few). React brings many advantages to the table, making it a better choice than other frameworks like Angular.js.
Today I’ll try to elaborate my little understanding of these topics:
- What is React?
- Why React?
- Features of React
- Components
- Conditional Rendering
- How Rendering Works
- State management
- What is props?
- Industry Trends
What is React?
React is an open-source, front-end, JavaScript library for building user interfaces or UI components. It is maintained by Facebook and a community of individual developers and companies. React can be used as a base in the development of single-page or mobile applications.
Let’s take a look at an Instagram webpage example, entirely built using React, to get a better understanding of how React works. As the illustration shows, React divides the UI into multiple components, which makes the code easier to debug. This way, each component has its property and function.
Now that we know what React is let’s move on and see why React is the most popular front-end library for web application development.
Why React?
Besides the declarative outcomes-based language and the efficient tree reconciliation, here are a few of the other reasons why I think React gained its massive popularity:
- Working with the DOM API is hard. React gives developers the ability to work with a “virtual” browser that is friendlier than the real browser. React basically acts like your agent who will do the communication with the DOM on your behalf.
- React is often given the “Just JavaScript” label. This means it has a very small API to learn and after that your JavaScript skills are what make you a better React developer. This is an advantage over libraries with bigger APIs. Also, the React API is mostly functions (and optionally classes if you need them). When you hear that a UI view is a function of your data, in React that’s literally the case.
- Learning React pays off big-time for iOS and Android mobile applications as well. React Native allows you to use your React skills to build native mobile applications. You can even share some logic between your web, iOS, and Android applications.
- The React team at Facebook tests all improvements and new features that get introduced to React right there on facebook.com, which increases the trust in the library among the community. It’s rare to see big and serious bugs in React releases because they only get released after thorough production testing at Facebook. React also powers other heavily used web applications like Netflix, Twitter, Airbnb, and many more.
Feature Of React
Declarative
React creates a very interactive and dynamic user interface for websites and mobile applications. Create simple views for each state in your application, and React will efficiently update and render just the right components when your data changes. Declarative views make your code more readable and easier to debug.
Virtual DOM
In React, for every DOM object, there is a corresponding “virtual DOM object.” A virtual DOM object is a representation of a DOM object, it creates a virtual copy of the original DOM. It’s a one-way data-binding hence manipulating the virtual DOM is quick rather than updating original DOM because nothing gets drawn onscreen.
Event handling
React creates its own event system which is fully compatible with W3C object model. All browser native events are wrapped by instances of Synthetic Event. It provides a cross-browser interface to a native event. That means you do not need to worry about incompatible event names and fields. Besides, React event system is implemented through event delegation and also has a pool of event objects to reduce memory overhead.
JSX
JSX can best be thought of as a markup syntax that very closely resembles HTML. It is more or less like the combination of Javascript + XML. JSX makes writing React components, the building blocks of React UI, easier by making the syntax developers use for generating these strings of HTML almost identical to the HTML they will inject into the web page.JSX is one of the best ReactJS features. Web developers will always go for an easy way out, which is why this is a great choice for many.
Performance
React uses one-way data binding with an application architecture called Flux controls.ReactJS helps us update the View for the user and, with Flux, can control the application workflow. Introducing virtual DOM adds advantages where it compares the new data with original DOM and automatically updates the view
Component
Components are the building blocks of any React application, and a single app usually consists of multiple components. A component is essentially a piece of the user interface. React splits the UI into independent, reusable parts that can be processed separately.
There are two types of components in React:
- Functional Components: These components have no state of their own and only contain a render method, so they are also called stateless components. They may derive data from other components as props (properties).
function Greeting(props) {
return <h1>Welcome to {props.name}</h1>;
}
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- Class Components: These components can hold and manage their state and have a separate render method for returning JSX on the screen. They are also called stateful components, as they can have a state.
class Greeting extends React.Component {
render() {
return <h1>Welcome to {this.props.name}</h1>;
}
}