ReactJS tutorial

React Introduction Overview

Created by Jordan Walke (a software engineer at Facebook), ReactJS is an open-source, component-based front-end JavaScript library that can be well characterized as a declarative, efficient, and flexible one, especially for building reusable UI components. It is responsible only for the view layer of the application. Now used in products like WhatsApp & Instagram, Facebook developed ReactJS in 2011 in its news feed section. ReactJS was initially developed and maintained by Facebook and was released to the public in the month of May 2013.

MVC or model view controller architecture is the most famous for websites nowadays. React is the ‘V’ of the MVC architecture which stands for view. A ReactJS application is known to be a multi-component application. Each component of the ReactJS application is responsible for outputting a small, reusable piece of HTML code. Being the heart of all React applications, its components can also be nested. This nesting with other components allows the creation of complex applications built of simple building blocks. To fill data in HTML DOM, ReactJS uses virtual DOM based mechanism as it works fast. The virtual DOM only changes individual DOM elements. Thus it does not reload complete DOM every time and is certainly fast.

There are certain unique yet vital features of ReactJS that make it so popular. These are JSX, Components, One-way Data Binding, Virtual DOM, Simplicity, and Performance. A good supply of documentation, tutorials, and training resources, helps the developers to learn and to understand ReactJS easily. Especially for the developers with the Javascript background, it is quite easy to use. Unlike the complex coding of a dynamic web application, ReactJS provides less coding gives more functionality, and also supports the building of machine-readable codes. ReactJS is a great performer as it manages a virtual DOM. The presence of a handy set of tools in ReactJS makes the task of the developers understandable and easier. ReactJS applications can run on the server which makes navigation on various search engines easy. This is because the virtual DOM renders and returns to the browser as a regular web page. ReactJS also offers a very rich JavaScript library thus providing more flexibility to the developers.