What is React?
React is a JavaScript-based library built and maintained by Meta (Facebook) used for creating user interfaces that are declarative, efficient, and customizable. React is an open-source UI development library rather than a language widely used in web development. It provides various extensions for entire application architectural support, such as Flux and Reacts Native, beyond mere UI. React is being used by thousands of companies worldwide to create single-page web or mobile applications. React works amazing for data rendering and its powerful library is optimal for fetching constantly changing data. Developers can easily update the part of the DOM where a change is needed rather than updating the whole web page.
The React JavaScript library was developed by Jordan Walke, Facebook in 2013. This efficient and flexible open-source JavaScript library is lucrative for building simple, fast, and scalable frontends of web applications and has taken the front-end development space by storm since its inception.
The latest survey by Stack Overflow revealed that React is the most used web framework for web development, while Angular ranked 9th on the same list. React is used by industry giants like Apple, Netflix, Paypal, and many others, for their software productions.
React has a series of benefits to offer, which makes it a huge success.
The following are a few reasons why companies chose to program with React:
- React can handle and write several smaller, reusable files instead of massive, dense code files given its modularity.
- React can handle complex updates and be responsive at lightning-fast speeds.
- React works best in large assignments that display a lot of altering data.
- React can be used for a variety of projects that aren't related to building a web app or a website. There are endless possibilities that can be explored with react.
What are the benefits of using React?
React is known for its simple and lightweight JS library that handles the view layer easier to implement. A developer can begin with ReactJs best features by developing web applications with a basic understanding of JavaScript.
1. Flexibility
The react code is flexible and easier to maintain due to its modular structure that gives liberty to developers while developing web applications. It can save a huge amount of time and cost for the business with its features and flexibility.
2. Enhanced performance
React JS was designed to deliver high-performance outcomes and the core of the framework offers a virtual DOM program and server-side rendering, which makes complex apps run extremely fast without trouble.
3. Building speed
The react allows developers to work around individual parts of their application on both the client-side and the server-side, which ultimately boosts the speed of the development process. A team of developers can write and work on individual parts without causing the logical change in the application.
4. Usability
Understanding and knowing react are comparatively very easy. One can refer to free modules or videos and learn them in a matter of 2-3 days. And deployment of reacting is fairly easy to accomplish with a basic knowledge of JavaScript.
5. Reusable Components
React Js Developers can save on time as they can reuse the components without writing various codes for the same feature. And this becomes one of the great advantages of using react as one can save and reuse components. Also, if the developers make changes to a particular part of the web app, it will not affect other parts of the application.
7 most popular Apps made using React
1. Facebook (Meta)
Facebook (Meta) has built its webpage using react and blended its scripts into the application code. Facebook's mobile app, however, is built using React Native and interestingly, Facebook has developed and is still maintaining React Js library.
2. Pinterest
Pinterest is known for its feature of pins and being the crash corner for everything artistic. Users can transfer, save, sort, and manage pictures and recordings from the application to their pinboards. Pinterest provides its customers with a customized media stage where users can peruse the content of others in their feed.
3. WhatsApp
WhatsApp is a globally used messaging app that uses react to build and add-on features to the Application along with Underscore.js and Velocity.js as a portion of its most productive engines.
4. Flipboard
Flipboard is the one-stop online social magazine, where content from colloquial communities, distributors, online sources, and photograph-sharing destinations can all be accessed on one platform built using react.
5. Paypal
PayPal is an online payments platform that permits cash transfers and is an electronic option worldwide, based on React's open-source UI library.
6. Instagram
The features of ReactJS are used for features like geolocations, Google Maps APIs, and search engine accuracy that jump out without hashtags within Instagram.
7. Reddit
Reddit is a client-generated content social communication site that uses React. Users can present a connection or post anything like an inquiry, and take an interest in the local area through threads and threads.
10 most useful features of React 16
1. Virtual DOM
The virtual DOM is an in-memory representation of the DOM and a reconciliation algorithm that is at the heart of React's performance. Apparently, for every DOM object in React, there is a corresponding "virtual DOM object" as a representation. The virtual node creates a virtual copy of the original DOM and works on one-way data binding; hence manipulating the virtual DOM is quick rather than updating the original DOM because nothing gets drawn onscreen. React passes the attributes through the DOM, which allows React users to get rid of the attribute whitelist that reduces file sizes.
Earlier React 16 used to ignore any unrecognized attribute given to an element. But now, react allows standard or custom attributes to be processed for the DOM.
The virtual DOM is a lightweight copy of the original DOM carrying all the properties of the real DOM. The whole virtual DOM gets updated when developers make changes to the DOM, but, they are much faster than the original ones. Once the developers update the document, ReactJS compares the updated virtual DOM and the pre-updated original DOM. Hence, it just updates the original DOM to the section which was missing or different. Thereby, ReactJS's DOM manipulation is much faster than other frameworks.
2. Components
Everything that you add on and build on/with react is known as a component. A webpage in reactJS is typically divided into various components. Every component defines a view or a part of a view on the web application page. Developers can compose together interfaces that scale well by breaking down UIs into functional and atomic pieces. , you can compose together interfaces that scale well. Component logic is written in JavaScript to pass the data through the app and keep the state out of the DOM. The following image is a representation of what the components mean/look like on the web app page.
3. Declarative Programming & State
The state is the data that describes/defines a React function component or what your component renders as its content. It means that developers define a JavaScript function that is different from Imperative programming. App developers simply update the state and React manages the rest of the process that leads to the view getting updated on the DOM. This process is known as declarative programming, where you simply describe your views in terms of the data that it has to show. In react, developers make interactive UIs by changing the state of the component and React takes care of updating the DOM according to it. In react, the DOM is declarative and developers never interact with the DOM. The UI is updated when we change/update the state. One can just change the program's state and see how the UI will look, which makes it easier to design and debug, and web app development easier.
4. JSX
JSX is like an XML language that incorporates JavaScript expressions, used by the render method inside a class component or the function component itself. Developers compile JSX into efficient render functions. JSX is considered one of the best React features. React embraces the fact that rendering logic is naturally coupled with other UI logic: how events are handled, how the state changes over time, and how the data is prepared for display.
5. Synthetic Events
React internally puts together browser-specific implementations into Synthetic Events, which are dispatched on user interaction and displayed on the interface. Synthetic events help in increasing the performance of the application. The synthetic event works the same way as the event system of browsers; the only difference is that the same code will work across all browsers. In simple words, through synthetic events, the same API interface is implemented across multiple browsers.
6. Props
In React, components can either fetch data from an API and store it in the local state, or they can ingest data using props, which are like inlets into a prop while developing a web application. React Props are like function arguments in JavaScript and attributes in HTML, defining what the component has to perform as a task. Props are simply used to pass data from a parent component to a child component in React and they are the main mechanism for component communication.
7. One-way Data Binding
One-way data-binding means that throughout the whole application data flows only in one direction, which gives better control to the designer while building a web app. The data is transferred from the parent component to the child component through read-only props needed to define the function of the component. These props cannot be sent back to the parent component and this is how one-way data binding works. However, the child component can communicate with the parent component to update the state via callback functions if needed.
8. Error Handling
In react, JavaScript error is the part of application code inside the components. These errors are used to corrupt the React internal state & cause the multiplication of cryptic errors. To resolve this issue, React V16 introduces a new concept of error boundary for React users which includes try-catch statements to fix these errors. Error perimeters are the important components in React that catch JS errors inside their subtree and before they reflect on the DOM, component & logs while rendering in the life cycle method & constructors.
9. Server-Side Rendering
React V16 supports streaming, which is a complete server renderer that enables the system to work very fast and send bytes to the client faster. React Server-Side Rendering in react is where the server returns a ready-to-render HTML page and the JS scripts required to make the page interactive. The HTML is rendered instantly with all the dormant elements. In the meantime, the browser downloads and completes the JS code post which the page becomes interactive.
10. Reduced File Size
The file sizes in react 16 are smaller than the react 15 version. Rollup helps React create flat bundles for different targeted structures that result in better performance in terms of size & runtime and increase the performance of the entire process.
React- 5.3 kb bought down from 20.7 kb
React DOM- 141 kb reduced to 103.7 kb
React + React-DOM- 109 kb reduced from 161.7 kb
