What is a React: A Detailed Guide for Understanding the Basics

What is a React: A Detailed Guide for Understanding the Basics
14 min read

Introduction

In today’s digital age, mobile and web applications have become vital components of our lives, serving various purposes such as transportation, food ordering, and banking. The smooth operation of these applications owes much to the effectiveness of frameworks that ensure a seamless user experience. Among these, React stands out as a robust front-end library. 

This guide explains in detail what React is and its advantages and disadvantages and offers insight into the library’s functionality. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced developer, this detailed guide serves as a valuable resource to access the full potential of React in your projects.

What Is A React?

React acts as a framework, employing Webpack to automatically compile React, JSX, and ES6 code, and it also manages CSS file prefixes. React serves as a JavaScript-based UI development library. Although React is a library rather than a language, it enjoys widespread adoption in web development. It was introduced in May 2013 and has since become one of the most prevalent front-end libraries for web development.

What Is React?

React provides numerous add-ons for comprehensive application architectural support, such as Flux and React Native, extending beyond UI development. 

History of ReactJS 

In contrast to other technologies available, React is relatively recent. Jordan Walke, a Facebook software engineer, initiated the development of the library in 2011. The concept drew inspiration from XHP, a simple HTML component framework for PHP. React made its debut with the creation of Facebook’s newsfeed in 2011. Subsequently, Instagram adopted and integrated it into its platform.

Why Choose React?

As you know what React is, let’s delve into why you should choose it for your next project.

Why Choose React?

Simplified Dynamic Application Development: React simplifies the creation of dynamic web applications by minimizing coding requirements and maximizing functionality compared to JavaScript, where coding complexity can escalate rapidly. 

Enhanced Performance: Leveraging React router DOM accelerates web application development. Virtual DOM selectively updates only the changed components in the Real DOM, speeding up the process compared to traditional web applications. 

Component Reusability: React’s modular structure revolves around components, which are the foundation of any React application. These components, each with logic and controls, are reusable across the application, significantly reducing development time. 

Unidirectional Data Flow: React uses a unidirectional data flow, offering error debugging by nesting child components within parent components—this directional flow streamlines error identification within the application.

Simple Learning Curve: React’s learning curve is easy, blending fundamental HTML and JavaScript concepts with additional functionalities. While acquiring proficiency requires time, React’s library is relatively simple to understand. 

Versatile Application Scope: React caters to both web and mobile app development. React Native, a framework derived from ReactJS, is immensely popular for crafting visually appealing mobile applications, expanding React’s applicability beyond web development.

Dedicated Debugging Tools: Facebook offers a Chrome extension for debugging React applications, streamlining the debugging process and enhancing efficiency. 

These factors contribute to React’s widespread adoption and acclaim among organizations and businesses. Now, let’s delve into React’s distinctive features.

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Features of ReactJS

We will now explore the following features of React:

Features of ReactJS

JSX (JavaScript Syntax Extension):

JSX combines HTML and JavaScript, allowing the embedding of JavaScript objects within HTML elements. Since browsers don’t support JSX, the Babel compiler translates the code into JavaScript. JSX simplifies coding and enhances readability, especially for those familiar with HTML and JavaScript. 

Virtual DOM:

The Document Object Model (DOM) is crucial for web functionality, but updating the entire DOM at once can slow down web applications. React mitigates this using a virtual DOM, a replica of the real DOM. Modifications to the application trigger updates to the virtual DOM first, enabling efficient comparison and selective updating of the real DOM.

One-way Data Binding:

In React, data moves in a single direction, flowing from parent to child components. Child components cannot directly alter parent component data but can communicate with parents to modify states based on inputs.

Performance:

Utilizing React virtual DOM and selective updating enhances DOM performance. By organizing components separately, React optimizes DOM execution, resulting in faster rendering.

Extension:

There are various extensions for creating comprehensive UI applications, supporting mobile app development, and React server-side rendering. Extensions like Flux, Redux, and React Native extend React’s capabilities for crafting visually appealing interfaces.

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Conditional Statements:

JSX allows the writing of conditional statements to control data display in the browser, enhancing UI flexibility.

Components:

React.js adopts a component-based architecture, dividing web pages into multiple components. Each component has its logic and design, improving code organization, reusability, and performance. 

Simplicity:

With its component-based structure and JSX syntax, React.js simplifies code, making it more understandable and more accessible to debug with reduced verbosity. 

Advantages of React.JS

Advantages of ReactJS

Customized Virtual DOM: React.js constructs a personalized virtual DOM, leveraging the speed advantage of JavaScript virtual DOM over traditional DOM, enhancing application performance. 

Exceptional UI Design: React.js creates impressive user interfaces, empowering developers to craft visually appealing and interactive applications. 

SEO Friendliness: React.js offers search engine optimization (SEO), ensuring that web applications built with React are search-engine friendly, improving visibility and accessibility.

Modularization and Data Validation: ReactJS promotes modularization and ensures data validity, making it easier to manage larger applications by enhancing readability and maintainability. 

Integration with Various Architectures: React seamlessly integrates with various architectural patterns, allowing developers to adopt the most suitable architecture for their projects, enhancing flexibility and scalability. 

Simplified Scripting Environment: React simplifies the entire scripting environment process, streamlining development workflows and reducing complexity, improving efficiency and productivity. 

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Facilitates Advanced Maintenance: ReactJS simplifies advanced maintenance tasks, making managing and updating applications easier over time, leading to enhanced long-term sustainability and performance.

Faster Rendering: React ensures quicker rendering of user interfaces, optimizing performance and providing a smoother user experience. 

Mobile App Development: React offers the availability of a script for developing mobile applications, making it an excellent choice for cross-platform development and extending application reach. 

Strong Community Support: ReactJS benefits from a large and active community of developers and contributors, providing various resources, support, and updates, ensuring continuous improvement and innovation in the React ecosystem. 

Key Concepts in React

Key Concepts in React

  • Components

ReactJS revolves around the concept of components, which are self-contained, reusable building blocks that include a specific piece of functionality and user interface. The understanding of React components is crucial for developing applications with ReactJS framework. The component name must start with a capital letter when creating a React component.

  • Functional Components

It is a JavaScript function that returns JSX (JavaScript XML) elements. They are simpler and generally used for stateless and presentational components.  

  • Class Components

The class component has additional features, such as state management and React lifecycle methods, making it suitable for more complex components. 

  • Props

Props permit the transmission of data into a component from its parent component. Immutable in nature, they are used to tailor a component’s behavior or appearance. Props are like function arguments; you send them into the element as attributes. 

  • State

The state represents the internal data of an element that can change over time. Class components can define and manage state using this.state object. The state also updates trigger component re-rendering. 

  • JSX (JavaScript XML)

You may write HTML-like code in JavaScript due to the JSX syntax extension utilized in React. It offers a simple and articulate approach to defining the structure and appearance of UI components. 

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Syntax

JSX syntax bears a resemblance to HTML, yet it is not HTML itself. It serves as a syntax extension that is transpiled into JavaScript through a build tool such as Babel. JSX elements adopt the appearance of HTML tags but are established within JavaScript. JSX is not mandatory as there are other ways to achieve the same thing, but using JSX makes it easier to develop React applications.

You can integrate JavaScript expressions into JSX using curly brackets {}. This enables dynamic computation and presentation of values within JSX components. JSX is widely used in React components to specify the layout and content of the user interface. You can directly compose JSX elements using the component’s ‘render()’ method. 

  • Virtual DOM

Virtual DOM stands for Document Object Model. It represents the structure and content of an HTML or XML document in a logical tree structure, which serves as a programming interface for web documents. Through the DOM, programs can access, modify, and update a web page’s components, properties, and text.

When a web page loads in a browser, the browser parses the HTML or XML document and creates the DOM tree to represent the document’s structure. Each “node” in the tree is referred to as an element, and these elements can have parent-child relationships. For instance, the <html> element serves as the root of the DOM tree, containing child nodes like <head> and <body>, each with their child nodes. React introduced the Virtual DOM, a lightweight version of the actual DOM stored in memory. It acts as a virtual copy of the DOM tree managed by React. It utilizes the Virtual DOM as a reconciliation mechanism to update and render components efficiently, minimizing direct manipulation of the real DOM. 

React Virtual DOM uses efficient diffing algorithms to pinpoint and update only the necessary changes between previous and current states. This optimization reduces the need for actual DOM manipulations, resulting in quicker and more efficient rendering of components.

  • State

State is a core concept in React that includes the internal data of a component. It empowers components to manage and track data changes over time. State represents the data capable of influencing the behavior or appearance of the component. By reacting to changes in its data, the state empowers components to refresh and re-render.

State management is integrated into class components. By utilizing ‘this.state’, the component’s constructor defines the initial state. Generally, a state is an object containing key-value pairs representing different data fields. The component’s render method accesses and uses the state data to construct the user interface.

  • Props

Props offer parent components to tailor the behavior and appearance of their child components. The parent component defines and assigns values to the props. The child component receives and applies these props for functionality or rendering purposes. Props can be accessed within an element through the props object. Functional components receive props as arguments, while class components access props using the ‘this.props’ approach.

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State vs Props 

  • Mutability

Props: Given props’ read-only nature, child components should refrain from modifying them. They are conveyed from the parent component to the child component unchanged.

State: It is mutable and utilizes a setState() method for modification. Upon state alteration, React automatically initiates page re-rendering.

  • Ownership

Props: They are conveyed from a parent component to its child components. The child components receive and employ the props, which are possessed and managed by the parent component.

State: Each element manages its state. The component where it’s defined possesses and oversees the individual state.

  • Scope

Props: Child components receiving props can access them. Within the child component’s scope, props are accessible.

State: It is confined to the component where it’s defined. It’s neither directly accessible nor modifiable by other elements.

  • Rendering and updates

Props: When a parent component’s props change, React promptly transmits those changes to the child components, prompting re-rendering of affected child components.

State: React triggers a re-render of the component and its child components upon state modification through setState(), reflecting the altered state in the UI.

  • Component Lifecycle

Lifecycle methods in React are predefined functions that are used at different points in a component’s lifecycle. They consist of React hooks that allow you to execute code at specific moments in a component’s lifecycle, such as initializing state, fetching data, updating the user interface, or releasing resources.

 React components progress through various stages during their lifespan. A corresponding set of lifecycle methods is triggered at each stage, providing opportunities to manage component behavior and perform specific tasks.

The Mounting, Updating, and Unmounting phases represent the three pivotal stages of a component’s lifecycle.

  • Hooks

A pivotal addition in React 16.8 is the introduction of hooks, which use functional components to handle lifecycle events, manage state, and deal with side effects without relying on class components. They provide a simpler and more coherent approach to creating React components. We can integrate with React functionalities such as state management and lifecycle methods through hooks.

The following guidelines are applied to React hooks:

  • Only React function components are eligible to use hooks; other elements are not permitted.
  • Conditional use of hooks is not supported.
  • The useState() hook offers the presence of state in functional components. Functional components can use multiple useState() hooks to manage different state elements.
  • The useEffect() hook rules lifecycle operations and side effects within functional components. The first parameter of useEffect() is a callback function, while an optional array of dependencies is the second parameter.

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Additional Hooks

  • Functional components can utilize useContext to consume values from a context provider.
  • For intricate state management, useReducer serves as an alternative to useState.
  • UseRef facilitates direct DOM manipulation and value persistence across renders.

Are you still confused? Artoon Solution, a reliable ReactJS Development Company, is here to assist you in making informed decisions! 

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FAQs

What is ReactJS used for? 

ReactJS is primarily used to develop User Interfaces (UI) that enhance program speed. It utilizes a virtual DOM (JavaScript object) to improve app efficiency.  

Is React JS considered a framework?

Yes! React UI component framework is a program that offers pre-built or fully prepared associated features to expedite the design process. 

Is React JS for the frontend or backend?

ReactJS serves as a free, elemental frontend toolkit responsible solely for the layered architecture of the software. 

Which is preferable: React or Angular?

Angular is preferred over React when applications need to integrate complex functionalities like dynamic, solitary, and native web applications. It can be applied to any application, including standard ones, focusing on developing UI components. 

What sets React apart from React JS?

While Reactjs serves as a software framework, and React Native includes the entire framework, the two complement each other as the former forms the core of the latter. React Native provides a native feel to mobile applications, whereas Reactjs is optimal for building apps with enhanced efficiency and complexity.

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