September 13, 2022
A guide to become a React Developer
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To begin utilizing the React developer tools, it must be installed as a browser extension. Chrome, Firefox, and Edge are currently supported by the plugin. Once you’ve installed developer tools, you can put them to use. To install the plugins on Chrome, Firefox or Edge, click on these links respectively:
The next step is to launch the React dev tools. To activate the extension right-click anywhere in the browser window and click on inspect. You may also access it by hitting F12. This will launch the browser developer tools with all of the standard tabs such as elements, console, and so on.
When you install the React dev tools extension, you will now have access to two new tabs: components (these are used to investigate the component tree) and profiler (a tool for measuring performance).
Components: The components tab’s main objective is to show the architecture of the React application. The architecture depicts how all of the components are nested. In addition, we obtain other essential information on the component. For example: state, props, context, functions, etc.
The most basic way to find components is to utilize the arrow in the upper left corner. Then, simply point and click on the component to be inspected. Another way is to search for the component we’re looking for using the built-in search bar to discover and highlight components. This is especially useful if we have a deeply nested component tree. The components and elements tabs interact with one another. If we choose any component from the components tab, it will also be selected in the elements tab, and vice versa.
The majority of the time, we want to see what’s going on inside our components. We can see a significant amount of useful data about the component using React developer tools. In addition, we can watch how the information changes as we interact with the program. This also works in the other direction. This implies we can alter state without interacting with the user interface. We delete items by directly altering the component state in the developer tools.
The components tab is linked to the console. Once we’ve decided on a component, we can go to console and enter $r. It will display all of the information on the components tab. We can now communicate with the component via our favorite console. Furthermore, we may call functions that the component has access to. Alternatively, within the components tab, you may access and alter a component’s state and properties. From the right side, click and edit the props and state. To see state, you must first initialize the component with some state from your files.
The React developer tools make it simple to analyze source code in the browser window, preventing developers from repeatedly jumping between the coding editor and the browser. All the developers have to do is to choose the component and then click the < >. This will open the associated file, allowing developers to examine the problem with the code.
If we use create-react-app or Next.js, we receive this feature by default. If you can’t view your component’s original code, you’ll need to add babel-plugin-transform-react-jsx-source to your webpack setup.
We can simply monitor how our application behaves using these tools and address concerns as they arise. When the application is stable and free of bugs. it’s time to boost its performance. Profiler can help us with that.
Profiler gives us the duration it takes for each component of our program to be rendered. We can determine which component is causing our application to lag and subsequently improve its performance. It also indicates whether or not the component was rerendered and what triggered the rendering. It’s worth examining to see if there are any superfluous re-renders in our app. And if there are, we can almost certainly optimize them, increasing the speed of our React website.
What does a React developer do?
A React developer produces JavaScript-based apps for web or mobile platforms. React developers usually focus on front-end development. React developers are in charge of UI components including icons, pictures, and gesture-based functionality like swiping, long-pressing, and drag-and-drop. A React developer is responsible for converting wireframes (screen blueprints) into code. They also use and create CSS selectors and HTML tags. React developers are responsible for cross-platform functionality in addition to designing and developing new features. They guarantee that the program runs smoothly on many browsers and devices. Being active in all stages of interface development necessitates React developers testing the apps on which they work. React developers work with the customer to better understand how to realize their app concept through software development and consult with back-end engineers and developers to ensure error-free collaborative user-facing and server-side interactions.
Why React developers love Node
The majority of React examples and projects available on the web are built with Node. As a result, React developers love to use Node because it is easy to find support. Also, Node is JavaScript, which React developers are already familiar with. They do not need to learn any more languages. Using the same language enables for full code sharing across server-side and client-side code. React developers stop talking server-side and client-side because on both sides, nothing except JavaScript is utilized. Node.js uses a single threaded architecture in conjunction with event looping to produce a highly scalable server, as opposed to traditional servers such as the Apache HTTP server, which employs restricted threads to handle a huge number of requests. Because there are almost no methods in Node.js that directly do I/O, this single threaded approach also hinders the server from responding in a non-blocking way. Furthermore, because Node.js apps output data in bulk, they do not suffer from buffering.
Most significantly, your React front-end code can be run in a Node environment. This is the simplest way to implement server-side rendering and Universal/Isomorphic applications.
React developers love Node.js because it is an excellent choice for developers who want to get their apps into production as quickly as possible. It’s also popular because it’s simple to learn and offers an excellent ecosystem with ready-made modules.
Another reason is that ReactJS on the client side communicates with NodeJS on the server using API requests (for example, REST and/or GraphQL). Any other language/platform, however, may create an API server that works just as well. NodeJS has the benefit of allowing you to use the same language (e.g. ES6/7 JavaScript) and development and build tools (e.g. eslint, babel, webpack) for both client and server development.
Can we use React Native for Web development?
Developers can use React Native for Web to create a single React Native application that runs natively on Android and iOS as well as in a web browser using standard web technologies. The fact is that the basis of a mobile app differs significantly from that of a web app. React, for example, constructs its layout using basic HTML5 elements such as div and span, whereas React Native employs custom UI APIs such as view and text. Because of this distinction, few technologies allow developing apps for both web and mobile. React Native for Web attempts to fill this need. It is designed to aid in the development of genuinely cross-platform apps utilizing a single React Native codebase.
React Native for Web implements browser-compatible React Native components. If a <View> is used to render views in React Native mobile, a browser-compatible version of this <view> is provided in React Native for Web, which includes a function for compiling this view down to a web <div>.
This brings up an important point: not all native components can be rendered browser-compatible. Some mobile-oriented components make use of mobile hardware APIs that a web browser cannot directly access.
This implies that React Native for Web cannot be used to entirely transfer a program to its web version. But we can still transmit a significant portion of it, which is usually adequate. React Native for Web follows React Native’s CSS-in-JS approach, guaranteeing that the same set of styles works well on both mobile and web.
How to be a good React developer
To be a good React developer, you have to develop very essential skills in React development: Use and create semantic HTML tags and write CSS selectors. Apply a CSS reset. Know the box model and how to return to the border-box mode. Recognize flexbox. Operate with and apply responsive web concepts, such as correct media query use.
You never truly touch HTML in React. You work with JSX, a syntactic extension that is one of the most impressive components of the React ecosystem. Because JSX appears so similar to HTML, you may think of it as HTML-flavored JavaScript. What’s wonderful about JSX is that if you understand HTML and CSS, you can work with it naturally.
You can’t enjoy React without a solid understanding of the fundamental concepts provided by the JavaScript language, but these ES6 skills are also required. It is vital to understand when and from where you have access to the data you require. Variables are the feature built into JavaScript that allows us to store data in memory and access it later in our apps. The React pattern indicates that your ‘view is a function of your state.’ That is v = f(s) in arithmetic, and it is something you should remember while you review your library foundations skills.
State refers to data that we want to display to users or items in memory that we can access to allow our users to interact with our data. We keep all of the data that we show on a state object and access these bits of data through attributes on this state object. React got its name because as the state changes, the view updates (`v = f(s);`). As a result, your view ‘reacts’ to changes in your state object. You should review how to modify objects and change the values of their properties. Don’t worry, React handles the technique with a handy method called setState() to make this work in your favor.
Git is an essential component of any developer’s arsenal for storing projects on services such as GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab. Skills that should be part of your daily routine include change tracking using add, commit, push, and pull, strategies for branching and merging, and dealing with merge conflicts
While you may include React in any HTML page, there will be many more packages available that will allow you to enhance the React framework. You must be well-versed with the npm registry. This is where software developers may go to obtain software to help them make software. It may sound strange, but that is exactly what npm is: a cloud storage service for packages known as dependencies.
React includes state management. Many developers have been burnt along the road because they discovered the asynchronicity of state updates and how React manages them. Redux was created for this reason, as well as for scalability. Redux is a state management library that does a lot more. It is not a framework, but rather an opinionated approach to dealing with data. Redux’s ideas are similar to functional programming and immutability, but it is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Prior to getting into Redux, it is critical to understand the fundamentals of React programming.