Ever since 2010 there has been an elevated growth of web applications attributed to many sophisticated and lightweight JS libraries. From the end-user perspective, user-friendliness and reliability of the application are prominent factors they expect in an application. From a business point of view deciding the appropriate framework becomes a challenging task.
React.js is an open source JavaScript library created by Facebook in 2011 for building dynamic user interfaces. React is based on JavaScript and JSX, a PHP extension developed by Facebook, that allows for the creation of reusable HTML elements for front-end development. React now stays as a vivid choice for many organizations for their web applications. React is used by Top companies such as Netflix, PayPal, Twitter, Reddit, Uber, Udemy, Airbnb, Walmart, and many more. Let’s take a deep look at the benefits of using React JS in your project.
Migrating from an older technological infrastructure to a new one brings up certain concerns on the amount of effort and time required to perform the task.
React is lightweight hence it can be added into a small area on any existing application regardless of how it’s already built which allows developers to migrate as quickly or slowly as they would like.
Design patterns used by React makes it very difficult for developers to write poorly performing code. React introduced another breakthrough feature in web development – the Virtual DOM. It is the core reason behind super fast, scalable React applications. React’s ‘diffing’ algorithm constructs a representation of the page in virtual memory where it performs the required updates before redenering the final page. React also eliminates direct interaction with the DOM and the need for a number of code heavy dependencies like jQuery which can result in an overall reduction in deployed code size.
Search Engine Optimization is critical for the success of any online business. Page speed is one of the factors that are used by Google’s ranking algorithm. SEO requires sending a completely rendered page from the server to the browser. React is designed with SEO in mind, rendering on either the client or the server. Other frameworks do allow for server side rendering but require substantial developer effort for maintenance.
“Component-based” design of React helps us to build encapsulated components that manage their own state. Any complex user-interface can be created with a combination of these components. Each component has their own rendering lifecycle which results in better performance and better developer efficiency. From low level elements like buttons to high level elements like accordions all of them can be isolated and made reusable which saves a lot of development effort.
React combines HTML and JavaScript on the basis that they are inevitably tightly coupled and that separating them is not separating concerns but separating technologies. React also solves a myriad of issues that comes with CSS development including global namespace, minification etc. Refer React: CSS in js for details.
React specific developer tools for the browser provide valuable information about which component, what data and state of it was used to generate a piece of UI. A component takes in data as argument and outputs a representation of DOM. Since the state is not stored in DOM the components are atomic and testable.
React is not a framework like Angular or Vue.js, but a small library. Hence the learning curve is short for any new developers. Specifically for those developers who are new to front end development or those who are right out of college.
