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React Design Patterns and Best Practices
React Design Patterns and Best Practices

React Design Patterns and Best Practices: Design, build and deploy production-ready web applications using standard industry practices , Second Edition

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React Design Patterns and Best Practices

Taking Your First Steps with React

Hello, readers!

This book assumes that you already know what React is and what problems it can solve for you. You may have written a small/medium application with React, and you want to improve your skills and answer all of your open questions. You should know that React is maintained by developers at Facebook and hundreds of contributors within the JavaScript community. React is one of the most popular libraries for creating user interfaces, and it is well-known to be fast, thanks to its smart way of touching the Document Object Model (DOM). It comes with JSX, a new syntax to write markup in JavaScript, which requires you to change your mind regarding the separation of concerns. It has many cool features, such as server-side rendering, which gives you the power to write universal applications.

To follow this book, you will need to know how to...

Declarative programming

Reading the React documentation or blog posts about React, you have undoubtedly come across the term declarative. One of the reasons why React is so powerful is because it enforces a declarative programming paradigm.

Consequently, to master React, it is essential to understand what declarative programming means and what the main differences between imperative and declarative programming are. The easiest way to approach the problem is to think about imperative programming as a way of describing how things work, and declarative programming as a way of describing what you want to achieve.

A real-life parallel in the imperative world would be entering a bar for a beer, and giving the following instructions to the bartender:

  1. Take a glass from the shelf.
  2. Put the glass in front of the draft.
  3. Pull down the handle until the glass is full.
  4. Pass me the glass.

In...

React elements

This book assumes that you are familiar with components and their instances, but there is another object you should know if you want to use React effectively – the element.

Whenever you call createClass, extend Component, or declare a stateless function, you are creating a component. React manages all the instances of your components at runtime, and there can be more than one instance of the same component in memory at a given point in time.

As mentioned previously, React follows a declarative paradigm, and there's no need to tell it how to interact with the DOM; you declare what you want to see on the screen and React does the job for you.

As you might have already experienced, most other UI libraries work oppositely: they leave the responsibility of keeping the interface updated to the developer, who has to manage the creation and destruction of the...

Unlearning everything

Using React for the first time usually requires an open mind because it is a new way of designing web and mobile applications. React tries to innovate the way we build user interfaces following a path that breaks most of the well-known best practices.

In the last two decades, we learned that the separation of concerns is important, and we used to think about it regarding separating the logic from the templates. Our goal has always been to write the JavaScript and the HTML in different files.

Various templating solutions have been created to help developers achieve this.

The problem is that, most of the time, that kind of separation is just an illusion and the truth is that the JavaScript and the HTML are tightly coupled, no matter where they live.

Let's see an example of a template:

  {{#items}} 
{{#first}}
<li><strong>{{name}}&lt...

Common misconceptions

There is a prevailing opinion that React is a vast set of technologies and tools, and if you want to use it, you are forced to deal with package managers, transpilers, module bundlers, and an infinite list of different libraries. This idea is so widespread and shared among people that it has been clearly defined, and has been given the name JavaScript fatigue.

It is not hard to understand the reasons behind this. All the repositories and libraries in the React ecosystem are made using shiny new technologies, the latest version of JavaScript, and the most advanced techniques and paradigms.

Moreover, there is a massive number of React boilerplates on GitHub, each with tens of dependencies to offer solutions for any problems. It is straightforward to think that all these tools are required to start using React, but this is far from the truth. Despite this common...

Summary

In this first chapter, we have learned some basic concepts that are very important for following the rest of the book, and that are crucial to working with React daily.

We now know how to write declarative code, and we have a clear understanding of the difference between the components we create and the elements React uses to display their instances on the screen.

We learned the reasons behind the choice of locating logic and templates together, and why that unpopular decision has been a big win for React.

We went through the reasons why it is common to feel fatigue in the JavaScript ecosystem, but we have also seen how to avoid those problems by following an iterative approach.

Finally, we have seen what the new create-react-app CLI is, and we are now ready to start writing some real code.

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Key benefits

  • Get familiar with design patterns in React like Render props and Controlled/uncontrolled inputs
  • Learn about class/ functional, style and high order components with React
  • Work through examples that can be used to create reusable code and extensible designs

Description

React is an adaptable JavaScript library for building complex UIs from small, detached bits called components. This book is designed to take you through the most valuable design patterns in React, helping you learn how to apply design patterns and best practices in real-life situations. You’ll get started by understanding the internals of React, in addition to covering Babel 7 and Create React App 2.0, which will help you write clean and maintainable code. To build on your skills, you will focus on concepts such as class components, stateless components, and pure components. You'll learn about new React features, such as the context API and React Hooks that will enable you to build components, which will be reusable across your applications. The book will then provide insights into the techniques of styling React components and optimizing them to make applications faster and more responsive. In the concluding chapters, you’ll discover ways to write tests more effectively and learn how to contribute to React and its ecosystem. By the end of this book, you will be equipped with the skills you need to tackle any developmental setbacks when working with React. You’ll be able to make your applications more flexible, efficient, and easy to maintain, thereby giving your workflow a boost when it comes to speed, without reducing quality.

Who is this book for?

This book is for web developers who want to increase their understanding of React and apply it to real-life application development. Prior experience with React and JavaScript is assumed.

What you will learn

  • Get familiar with the new React features,like context API and React Hooks
  • Learn the techniques of styling and optimizing React components
  • Make components communicate with each other by applying consolidate patterns
  • Use server-side rendering to make applications load faster
  • Write a comprehensive set of tests to create robust and maintainable code
  • Build high-performing applications by optimizing components

Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Mar 30, 2019
Length: 350 pages
Edition : 2nd
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781789530179
Vendor :
Facebook
Languages :
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Product Details

Publication date : Mar 30, 2019
Length: 350 pages
Edition : 2nd
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781789530179
Vendor :
Facebook
Languages :
Tools :

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Table of Contents

18 Chapters
Section 1: Hello React! Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Taking Your First Steps with React Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Clean Up Your Code Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Section 2: How React works Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Creating Truly Reusable Components Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Compose All the Things Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Proper Data Fetching Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Write Code for the Browser Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Section 3: Performance, Improvements and Production! Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Make Your Components Look Beautiful Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Server-Side Rendering for Fun and Profit Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Improve the Performance of Your Applications Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
About Testing and Debugging Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
React Router Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Anti-Patterns to be Avoided Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Deploying to Production Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Next Steps Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Other Books You May Enjoy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Top Reviews
Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon 4.5
(8 Ratings)
5 star 62.5%
4 star 25%
3 star 12.5%
2 star 0%
1 star 0%
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Rahul Roy Mar 25, 2020
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
this book guide to design high quality code , but you should have experience in React and JS
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Moshe Fruktman Jan 22, 2020
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Good explanations. Thank
Amazon Verified review Amazon
WICoach Mar 06, 2021
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
I've been a React developer for 4 years, entirely self-taught and the "most senior" web developer for a mid-sized company. I decided to read books to help plug any holes in my knowledge, starting with "Learning React", "React Hooks", and finally this book.Both Learning React and React Hooks dedicate 50% or more of their book to contrived 'hello world' level examples. The Learning React book makes sense since it's aimed at a more intro/mid-level; but this book hits a great balance between "remember the basics" and diving into deeper, more complex, examples.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Francois Gravel Feb 19, 2020
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Enjoyed reading it. Has great examples. I recommend
Amazon Verified review Amazon
dougwig Jul 06, 2020
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Great book
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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