Introduction

While all React examples previously covered in this book have been relatively straightforward, and many key React concepts were introduced, it is unlikely that many real apps could be built with those concepts alone.

Most real apps that you will build as a React developer also need to send HTTP requests, access the browser storage and log analytics data, or perform any other kind of similar task. And with components, props, events, and state alone, you'll often encounter problems when trying to add such features to your app. Detailed explanations and examples will be discussed later in this chapter, but the core problem is that tasks like this will often interfere with React's component rendering cycle, leading to unexpected bugs or even breaking the app.

This chapter will take a closer look at those kinds of actions, analyze what they have in common, and most importantly, teach you how to correctly handle such tasks in React apps.