Hello and welcome to AboutReact. In this article, we will cover the introduction of React, What is React and Why should you learn it in 2022-23?
What is React?
In a small definition, React is a declarative, efficient, and flexible JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It is maintained by Facebook and a community of individual developers and companies.
It is currently one of the most popular JavaScript front-end libraries which has a strong foundation and a large community supporting it.
React can be used as a base in the development of single-page applications or mobile applications. Complex React applications usually require the use of additional libraries for state management, routing, and interaction with an API.
ReactJS is only a frontend library which deals with the View component of MVC (Model – View – Controller).
Why use ReactJs?
As we all know many Javascript frameworks like Angular, Backbone, Ember, and more were already in the industry to manage the view of our application then why React?
The answer is:
- Simple: Beauty of ReactJS is its simplicity. It is a component-based language with a well-defined lifecycle. In React development developers use JSX which allows you to mix HTML with JavaScript. This is not a requirement and developer can write in plain JavaScript but JSX is much easier to use.
- Easy to learn: If anyone has prior knowledge in programming then he/she can easily understand React but Angular and Ember are referred to as “Domain-specific Language” which makes them difficult to learn. For React, you just need basic knowledge of CSS and HTML.
- Native Approach: React can be used to create mobile applications (React Native).
- Data Binding: React uses one-way data binding and an application architecture called Flux controls the flow of data to components through one control point – the dispatcher. It’s easier to debug self-contained components of large ReactJS apps.
- Performance: React does not offer any concept of a built-in container for dependency. You can use Browserify, Require JS, EcmaScript 6 modules which we can use via Babel, ReactJS-di to inject dependencies automatically.
- Testability: ReactJS applications are super easy to test. React views can be treated as functions of the state, so we can manipulate with the state we pass to the ReactJS view and take a look at the output and triggered actions, events, functions, etc.
React is Component–based
The main point I want to highlight here about ReactJs is, it is a component-based language and everything here is a component. If you make any UI it can work as a component for others.
For example, one could make a <MyHeaderMenu> component that would
- Display a Logo, Heading, Subheading, Search bar input, Navbar menu
- Run validations on the text typed into the search bar input
- Submits the form when the user hits the enter key
All just by including one line of code: <MyHeaderMenu></MyHeaderMenu>.
For those of you coming from the Angular world, you can think of React Components as a close analogy to Directives
However, React is capable of becoming an entire replacement for your views because you can nest components. To create a large app you can use small components, These components can be standard HTML components or you can make your own components.
The biggest advantage of using components is that you can change any component at any point in time without affecting the rest of the applications. This feature is most effective when implemented with larger and real-time applications where data changes frequently.
When we update or change any data, ReactJS automatically updates the specific component whose state has actually changed. This saves the browser from the task of reloading the whole application to reflect the changes.
Example of the web page entirely rendered using ReactJs can be
<HomePage>
<Header tab-selected="home" />
<Banner>Here will be Banner Text</Banner>
<p>Contact me by filling below form</p>
<ContactForm />
<Footer />
</HomePage>
So with the help of this small example, you can imagine the scope of ReactJs in industry.
Hope you have enjoyed this article. If you still have any doubts about the topic you can comment below or contact us here.
Hope you liked it 🙂
