ReactJs is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces and allows the building of JavaScript-driven apps. ReactJs apps run in the browser and these don’t have to wait for a server response. Let us explore how ReactJs solves challenges in UI development while encouraging code reusability.
1. Consider a website with 10 HTML pages. In a website, header, footer, and the sidebar will be the same for all pages, to ensure consistency across the website. If any change in the footer is required (for example, the address in the footer needs to be modified) then it is mandatory to modify all the 10 HTML pages. Though header, footer, and sidebar are individual components on the web page, these components cannot be segregated.
2. Consider a web page with a lot of user interaction and if the user wants to update or modify one field, then the whole page document object model (DOM) needs to be refreshed and this will result in performance issues. As there is no way to update only that element DOM which is updated.
ReactJs or React is a declarative, efficient, and a flexible JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It lets you compose complex UIs from small and isolated pieces of code called components.”
ReactJs allows to fragment website into several individual components (refer the figure below). This is only a high-level component breakdown, but it can go deeper and allows the ability to create small component elements. For example, list views, navigation components, repeatable content, etc. That’s the capabilities ReactJs framework brings to the developers. This method of segmenting into different individual modules permits developers with to maintain them separately and create them as building blocks. This way it is easy for the development teams to distribute their work and manage efficiently.
ReactJs provides a component-based structure, where components form building blocks of the website. One can start building a website with components, like header, sidebar, footer or button. Then create main components which include all those smaller components. And, this way building website components goes on until it routes up to one root component and that final component is your application containing all the other components.
Each component has its own display logic and rendering information. One can re-use components anywhere as needed. Updating a component will automatically update all areas where the component is used, thereby enabling ease of maintenance.
ReactJs solves the problem of managing the UI state, which is the most common problem with normal JavaScript. In normal JavaScript (also known as Vanilla JavaScript), targeting DOM elements should be done manually. If any change made to the structure of HTML, then it is necessary to change even the way call is made to elements. This is due to the usage of query selectors. The jQuery made accessing DOM easier, but one would still have to pay attention to it. When the app becomes massive it becomes harder to maintain. So ReactJs helps you to manage the UI state very easily by allowing to create highly dynamic components.
ReactJs is maintained by the vast community. Because of this, framework code is much better and continues to be refined in regular intervals. So developers don’t have to worry about the app’s state and focus more on the business logic, as there is less chance of getting the web app to crash due to framework issues. The better code build abilities allows the Reactjs framework to be highly efficient and fast.
ReactJs offer developers strong ecosystem and developer communities to get self-help. If developers encounter any problems, it’s easy to find a solution through the strong ReactJs developer’s community or using a third-party component.
Kiran Pudi is a Technical Architect for the Enterprise Application Development at V-Soft Consulting. He holds 12+ years of experience in developing, designing, and architecting enterprise level applications primarily in Microsoft Technologies. He is also skilled in technologies like MVC, Web API, Entity Framework, Angular, C#, RPA and Machine learning.