React
React (or React JS) is an open-source Javascript library that enables building user interfaces based on UI components. Developers use it to manage their dynamic web applications and create reusable UI components. Optimising updates and rendering are possible thanks to a virtual DOM. It's a lightweight in-memory representation of the actual DOM that actually boosts the performance of the apps compared to direct DOM manipulation.
React is a great resource to take advantage of as it facilitates building and maintaining large web apps. It follows a unidirectional data flow (data flows in one direction from parent to child components), which makes managing the app state easier and decreases the possibility that unexpected side effects appear. React, created by Meta (formerly Facebook), is also popular and well-supported – it has a large contributors community that actively enlarges the already vast wealth of available resources and tools. Finally, developers can render the app's initial version on the server when they use React which makes it SEO-friendly and decreases the initial loading time for the users.
The dos and don'ts of React are simple. You should keep your components small and focused, limiting each of them to a separate, well-defined responsibility. Try using mostly functional components – they're not difficult to understand or test so you can enhance your app's performance. Also, proper management of the state and props is essential – use the state for values that change within a component, and props for values passed from a parent component.
What you shouldn't do is directly manipulate the DOM. React takes care of that for you, and trying to do it on your own may cause performance issues and hard-to-debug problems. You also should avoid using state values that stem from props, as they may generate inconsistencies and make your app difficult to understand. And don't use the index of an array as a key in a list of elements. React uses keys to check elements, and if you use the index as a key, it can cause unpredictable element behaviour where they are added or removed from the list.
React is a well-known, reliable library that helps developers build dynamic web apps with great performance.
