Before I start, I would like to know how you feel when you use Instagram, Facebook, Netflix and WhatsApp?Does the page reload all over again when you stream movies, tag a location or anyone over posts? Does it take much of your time when you do searches?

I am fairly sure the majority of you will answer NO, provided you have the necessary internet connection to use the above applications.

Major apps having a user database across all the continents are constantly improving the user experience. New technologies and libraries are being used by developers to bring the best out of the overall application.Speed, Scalability and Simplicity is the aim of every developer apart from utility while creating their own user interface in applications.

Following the trend, Reactjs incorporates all such impressive features. It has a lot of potential in creating complex functions. As for the proof you have already answered the queries above.

What is Reactjs?

React (also known as React.js) is an open-source, front end, JavaScript library for building user interfaces or UI components. It is maintained by Facebook and a community of individual developers and companies. GitHub repository for React: https://github.com/facebook/react

React was first created by Jordan Walke, a software engineer working for Facebook. React first deployed on Facebook’s newsfeed in 2011 and on instagram.com in 2012.

Why did Reactjs enter Web development?

Before 2015 web development was scripting and rendering (naming and bundling multiple scripts together). It was all about HTML and CSS dominating the front end and PHP dominating the backend.

Web development was all about putting static HTML pages in some folders and rendering using PHP. It wasn’t a unique and smart way to develop websites but it's still possible to pave a two-way connection between client and server using Server-Side Rendering (SSR).

Next JavaScript took the reins which aided development of webapps with client-side JavaScript to fetch data and addition of attributes to markups without affecting PHP and servers. This approach was dynamic and rendered several components. But Document Object Model manipulations (DOM) wasn’t fast.

Enter ReactJS!

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This Isomorphic JavaScript library introduced in 2015, enabled developers to build speedy dynamic web applications. It’s fairly new and gained popularity because of its great features. Virtual DOM which enabled developers to implement SSR without needing to update the whole view each time during an update. This feature consumes less development time and navigates quickly.

Applications of React JS:

1. Instagram uses ReactJS extensively, especially in the API of the app. Facebook, after buying Instagram, decided to develop this web app to increase the traffic. For this React was chosen. Its numerous features including the geolocations, Google Maps APIs, search engine accuracy as well as tags that pop out without hashtags all use ReactJS.  Instagram is completely based on the ReactJS library which in addition to the above features, boosts the overall performance of the app.

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2. Facebook is the creator of Reactjs library. During 2011, their code needed a crucial update due to increasing traffic. The one global solution was to permit different contents of the page to refresh according to user needs. And that was React,their exceptional solution. It provides a high-speed rendering for 2.2 billion users across the globe and allows easy access to their newsfeeds even when the Internet connection isn’t strong. Their webpage is built with React though they use it partially in it. The mobile app which we are highly familiar with is also built with a version of React called React Native. But it is only responsible for displaying the iOS and Android native components instead of the DOM elements.

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3. Netflix uses a React version on their Gibbon platform which is used for low-performance TV devices instead of the DOM used in web browsers. This improved in modeling their user interface architecture. It upgraded the experiences on TVs and game consoles. You can read the Netflix official blog post on how ReactJS improves the favourable factors.

As quoted, UI engineers at Netflix state in the blog post:- ” Our decision to adopt React was influenced by a number of factors, most notably: 1) startup speed, 2) runtime performance, and 3) modularity”

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4. WhatsApp now uses ReactJS for building user interfaces from Facebook along with Underscore.js and Velocity.js as some of its most efficient engines. This has helped to model the end-to-end encrypted communication. Recently, the WhatsApp Web App also uses React just like Facebook web mentioned above.

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There are few more applications that use React like Yahoo! Mail, Khan Academy, Code Academy, Dropbox, New York Times.

Tesla, Airbnb, Tencent QQ, and Walmart are among the top brands that built their mobile apps using the React Native framework. React web framework is recently being employed by renowned companies including Netflix, NASA, PayPal, Lyft, BBC, and New York Times.

Also, over 220,000 websites are using React. This fairly proves that React is much of a powerful and popular library.

Why should we use React?

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When there are so many open-source platforms for making the front-end web application development easier, like Angular, Flask, Vue.js, why react? 

Let’s face it! The front-end world is changing on a rapid basis. There are different frameworks, libraries and tools for building the same as well just like the programming languages we learn. But with every different language, framework or library we get somewhat an improvised version of the former. And the one that wins the battle is the one which is simpler to handle, easy to learn, and has a great community support. It also needs to be easy to implement and gives outstanding performance. Moreover, it can finally support the DRY (do not repeat yourself) principle and is painless to test.

And voila! We have all the same features with React. Anyone with a basic programming language who has learnt JavaScript beforehand along with HTML5, CSS and Bootstrap can learn React. React code is easier to maintain compared to other frontend frameworks because of its modular structure.

React allows developers to utilize individual parts of their application on both client-side and the server-side, which ultimately boosts the speed of the development process. In simple terms, different developers can write individual parts and all changes made won’t alter the application logic.

It has Native approach and can be used to create mobile applications (React Native). And React is a pro at reusability, meaning extensive code reusability is supported. For this reason, most developers love to prefer React over other frameworks.

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React uses one-way data binding and an application architecture called Flux that 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.

It's super easy to test and is independent of any concept of built-in container.

Getting Started with React:-

After getting to know much of its usability it's tempting to Get Started with React right? First of all, download VS Code installer for your OS (for Windows or Ubuntu or MacOS).  Click here to see the entire installation process.

Next in VS Code, you need to make sure you’ve configured your machine to run React code in VS code using npm. You will also need to set up a build environment for React that typically involves use of npm (node package manager), webpack, Babel and Fullstack React/React Native Snippets. 

This is the link to official documentation: https://reactjs.org/docs/getting-started.html. Read and get Started with your React journey.

Create Projects with React:

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Here are some lists of projects that you can create using React.

1. Calculator:-

Calculators are simple gadgets that perform a set of basic mathematical functions, including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and percentage. The main idea of this project is to build a calculator that can perform these essential functions.

To create even a simple calculator, you must prepare a setup for all the unique components, establish a mutual interactive platform, and also create a support system to handle failures, crashes, and bugs. You can use the Create React App package to instantiate a directory to hold and run the calculator app.

2. Social Media App:-

Social Media apps like Facebook, Instagram can be easily made using React. Some of the most common features of almost all social media apps are:

        Experiment and add more features to it.

3. Weather App:

Build a weather app that can display a 5-day weather forecast. You can use dummy data until you get it right. It must have all the basic functions, like city name, temperature, humidity, wind speed and other features that you normally see in your weather app.

There are many more. Click here to get the entire list and get started with your development journey.

Conclusion:

ReactJS is a fairly new library. But it has established it’s right in many giant internet corporations. Because of its simplicity and reusability of view components, many front-end developers have already embraced it’s potential and love to work with it. You can also get started with react and be a part of this efficient, declarative and flexible open-source JavaScript library. Learn and Create simple, fast and scalable frontends of web applications with React.

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