What is React — A guide to the JavaScript framework

Rohit Singh
4 min readOct 5, 2022

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With so many frontend frameworks to choose from in today’s market, it can be tricky knowing where to begin and which option is most suitable for your project. The surge of new development means there are a wide variety of libraries and tools to help you build awesome user experiences on the web. In this blog post, we’ll be taking a look at React — an open-source JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It’s one of the most popular libraries for building user interfaces. If you’re just getting started with React or want a refresher, read on!

What is React — A Guide to the JavaScript Framework
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What is React?

React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It’s used to create single-page applications, websites, and hybrid mobile apps. In fact, many large companies like Netflix, Airbnb, Uber and Walmart use React. The main idea behind React is that everything is a “composed view”. View components are often referred to as “decorators”, “tags” or “elements”. A composed view consists of one or more components. Each component has a “view” that describes the UI and a “logic” that describes how the view reacts to user events.

Why Is React So Popular?

React is popular for various reasons. First of all, it’s a fully open-source and free library that’s built and supported by a large community of developers. The simplicity of React, combined with its scalability as projects grow, is another reason why it’s so popular. Since React is designed to manage the UI in a simple and straightforward manner, it’s a great choice for all sorts of projects — from small, single-page applications, to large websites.

Installing and Using React

React is an open source and free to use JavaScript library. You can use it to build native apps using React Native, web apps using React Native, or hybrid apps using ReactJS.

React Native: This is used to cross-compile React.js apps for native mobile apps.

React Native Web: This is used to cross-compile React.js apps for the web.

React.js: This is used to develop web apps using JavaScript.

1. create a new folder for your React project.

2 open a terminal window, navigate to the folder and run the following command to install React: npm install react -g To check if the installation was successful, run the following command to make sure React is available in our global npm module directory

3. npm search react If everything went well, you should see the command below

4. Now, create an app by running the following command: create-react-app myapp This will create a new app with the name you provided.

5. Navigate to your project folder and run the following commands to start the app: npm start Open the browser and navigate to http://localhost:3000 to view the app.

How React Works

To understand how React works, let’s look at how a simple React application is built.

React.js: This is a JavaScript library that you use to create the “logic” of your application by defining components.

ReactDOM.js: This is the JavaScript library that you use to “mount” the React application onto a webpage.

React Native: This is a JavaScript framework used to create native apps using React.js.

React applications use a render method to create the view of an application. These views can be plain HTML, XML, or any other format. The view is created based on data retrieved from a server or data that is stored locally in the browser’s memory. The view is then “composed” into the user interface.

Key Features of React

  • It’s Simple: React is easy to learn, even if you don’t have a lot of experience in web development. It’s also easy to understand and read if you’re a more advanced user.
  • It’s Declarative: React is declarative, which means you write code that describes what you want to happen, rather than how to make it happen.
  • It’s Testable: React is built with testability in mind, and that’s one of its advantages. You can easily test React apps because the code is written in a way that’s easy to follow.
  • It’s Scalable: React is scalable because you can break down your app into small reusable “components” and then compose them whenever you want to create a new view.
  • It’s Component-Based: React is based on “components”. A component is a combination of a view and a logic (or functionality).

Is React Right for You?

React is a powerful JavaScript library that can help you build scalable and responsive user interfaces. It’s the right choice if you want to create simple views that can be reused. With the help of React, you can create user interfaces with JSX, a preprocessor that lets you write markup in JavaScript, making it a hybrid application.

Wrapping Up

React is an open-source JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It’s easy to use and flexible, thanks to its declarative approach. It’s also scalable and modular, making it suitable for most projects. With so many frontend frameworks to choose from in today’s market, it can be tricky knowing where to begin and which option is most suitable for your project. The surge of new development means there are a wide variety of libraries and tools to help you build awesome user experiences on the web. In this blog post, we’ll be taking a look at React — an open-source JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It’s one of the most popular libraries for building user interfaces. If you’re just getting started with React or want a refresher, read on!

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Rohit Singh
Rohit Singh

Written by Rohit Singh

Hello, this is Rohit Singh a frontend developer, freelancer, and blogger. I have been working in the tech industry for 5 years .

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