What is React.js?
The React.js framework is an open source JavaScript framework and library developed by Facebook. It is used to create interactive user interfaces and web applications quickly and efficiently with much less code than native JavaScript.
In React, you develop your applications by creating reusable components that you can treat as standalone Lego blocks. These components are the individual components of the interface that ultimately, when assembled, form the entire user interface of the application. The main role of Reacts in an application is to manage that application’s view layer, like V in the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern by providing the best and most efficient rendering execution. Instead of treating the entire UI as a single unit, React.js encourages developers to separate these complex UIs into individual reusable components to form blocks. construction of the entire user interface. In doing so, the React JS framework combines the speed and efficiency of JavaScript with a more efficient method of DOM manipulation to render web pages faster and create dynamic and highly responsive web applications.
What does React.js do?
Normally, you request a web page by typing its URL into your web browser. Your browser will then send a request to that web page that your browser will display. If you click on a link on this website to go to another page of the website, a new request will be sent to the server to get this new page.
This pattern of round-trip loading between your browser (the client) and the server continues for each new page or resource you try to access on a web page. This typical approach to loading web pages works great, but consider a very data-driven site. Reloading the entire web page over and over would be redundant and create a poor user experience. Additionally, when data changes in a traditional JavaScript application, it requires manual DOM manipulation to reflect those changes. You need to identify the changed data and update the DOM to reflect those changes, resulting in a full page reload.
React takes a different approach by allowing you to create what is known as a Single Page Application (SPA). A single-page application loads only one HTML document on the first request. It then updates the specific section, body, or content of the web page that needs to be updated using JavaScript. This model is called client-side routing because the client doesn’t have to reload the entire web page to get a new page every time a user makes a new request. Instead, React intercepts the request and only fetches and modifies the parts that need to be modified without having to trigger a full page reload. This approach results in better performance and a more dynamic user experience.
React is based on the virtual DOM, which is a copy of the real DOM. React’s virtual DOM is immediately reloaded to reflect this new change whenever there is a change in the data state. React then compares the virtual DOM with the real DOM to determine exactly what has changed.
Then React will figure out the cheapest way to patch the real DOM with this update without rendering the real DOM. As a result, React components and UI reflect changes very quickly because you don’t have to reload the entire page every time something is updated.
How to use React.js:
Unlike other frameworks like Angular, React does not enforce strict rules for code conventions or file organization. This means that developers and teams are free to define the conventions that work best for them and implement React as they see fit. With React, you can use as much or as little as you need due to its flexibility.
