Introduction to React
React Javascript library was developed by Facebook to help with front-end UI web app development. Today it has become a popular Javascript library used for frontend UI Web applications by many Fortune 500 companies.
In this article, we will look at the key features of React and why you should choose it over other libraries like Angular and Jquery. We will also see how React can be used to build complex web apps with a lot less code!
What is React?
React is a Javascript library developed by the Facebook development team to make rich front-end UIs.
It uses a component-based approach to building user interfaces which makes it fast rendering and easy to maintain.
Before React, they were using Jquery for DOM manipulation with HTML templates for UI rendering. This was not an efficient approach since most of the DOM queries were made repeatedly for each change in user input. In addition to that, since Jquery was being used to manipulate HTML templates after every state change, it resulted in a lot of code bloat for simple dynamic UIs.
To solve this problem Facebook development team built React from scratch and currently has a large community of web developers.
Why Choose React
React has several characteristics that set it apart from other JavaScript libraries.
Some of these characteristics are:
- React is flexible. It can be used with other Javascript frameworks like Angular and Backbone.
- It uses a component-based approach for developing front-end web applications. This makes code clean, maintainable and easy to read.
- It supports Server-side rendering which means it can be used to build SEO-optimized web applications.
- React has a thriving community of web developers and companies that develop apps using React. This means there is always someone to ask for help when you get stuck.
- React is new and fast gaining popularity. This means new features are added regularly so you can get the latest technology with easy upgrading.
- React is easy to learn. The documentation is very good with code samples for all features.
JSX
Instead of using HTML for UI components, React uses JSX which is a preprocessor to Javascript. JSX is a simple Javascript syntax extension that can be used to define UI components. It is advisable to use JSX with React for cleaner code and the development of complex web applications which are reusable.
Virtual DOM
React implements a virtual DOM which is a lightweight Javascript object. Each component in a React application has a corresponding element in the virtual DOM. The virtual DOM allows React to keep track of state changes and update only the components that need updating. This makes rendering fast since there is little manipulation of the real DOM.
One Way Flow
React is all about components. It uses a one-way flow of data which can be called the “data flow strategy”. Changes in parent components are propagated to the child components via props while changes in child components do not affect their parents. This makes React efficient since there is only the local state that needs changing instead of changing DOM elements in the real DOM.
Trending
In the tech world, React has been rising the charts in terms of programming. It is being used by several popular companies to build web apps. Some of those companies are Instagram, Netflix and Facebook. It has quickly become one of the most popular libraries around for developing front-end UI web applications. Try it out and see if it works for you.
To learn more about React and start building apps with it, be sure to check out our other articles.
