What is React.js used for? Top Features of React.js

If you haven’t heard of React.js before then you’re missing out on a major masterpiece in the developer world. As we go through this blog, we’ll guide you as to what and why React.js is preferred. React.js is considered to be one of the best front-end Javascript libraries used for building web applications. Initially, React.js was created in 2011 by Facebook for its own use but later turned out to be a game-changer for many other major companies.

Background of React.js

Initially, the developer community wasn’t really a fan of react.js as it used Javascript and Markup in a single file but soon they realized the importance of the idea and started accepting and acknowledging it worldwide. The component-centric approach followed by React.js was a real game-changer in the developers’ world.

Astonishingly, react.js has grown to be used by many Fortune 500 companies and Facebook, the creator of React.js has a full-time React development staff to propose enhancements, solve bugs and make just make React easier smoother framework.

There is no shortage of evidence that proves that React has been a leader in frontend tech, The state of Javascript survey 2020 showed that React is undoubtedly the most-used javascript library.

Let’s proceed and explore more about React.js and why it is used.

Features that make people use React.js

1. JSX

Unlike most javascript frameworks, React.js doesn’t just use regular Javascript for templating, rather it makes use of JSX. JSX is nothing but a simple Javascript that can be used to form HTML quotes and further on JSX uses these HTML tag syntax for rendering subcomponents. Additionally, users can also choose to write in a traditional javascript template without any hassle.

JSX is also majorly used by preprocessors for the conversion of HTML- type text in files into Javascript objects that can be parsed. React.js would have worked just fine even without the use of JSX but the majority of developers believe that JSX helps them work better with the UI present in the Javascript code and helps users create React components.

2. React.js is Flexible and simple to use

Once a developer learns how to use React.js, there’s no looking back. React.js is extraordinarily flexible and can be used on a variety of platforms to build remarkable interfaces. Another point to be noted here is that React.js is not a framework but a Javascript library and this has helped him in increasing its flexibility and evolving into a remarkable tool.

React.js has different tools and components for different functionalities, tools like Gatsby help users generate static sites in React, React Native is basically used for mobile apps development, and tools like Electron even facilitate the creation of desktop applications that are commendably compatible with both windows and mac. Not just that, React.js uses “Learn React Once and Write Everywhere” as its tagline to define its flexibility and ease of use.

React.js supports server rendering using its versatile tools like Nest.js. One can use React in existing apps as well and can be used to alter parts of existing applications.

Coming to the ease of using React.js, this masterpiece has a well-defined lifecycle and uses just simple Javascript which is easy to grasp. As mentioned above, JSX has simplified the web development process even more by integrating HTML with Javascript.

3. React Native

Back in 2015, Facebook announced that React has Native libraries which basically provides a React architecture to native applications as in android, IOS, and UPD. React Native has a simple slogan that says “Learn once, write anywhere”, is a mobile app framework using Javascript that can be utilized for both ios and android apps.

Initially released in 2015 as an open-source project and soon became the most renowned framework for developing native mobile applications.

React Native was built to work no different than React.js itself and has similar features like a variety of components, JSX syntax, and many more. So, if you are well equipped with working with React.js then React Native will be super easy for you. Native also allows components that are written in Objective-C, Swift, or even Java.

4. Variety of Libraries

In recent times, we need different libraries to solve different issues and React.js is a game-changer in that case. React has a variety of libraries ranging from routing libraries to state-management libraries and many more.

Whenever somebody works with React.js, they are also working with Node.js and that allows developers to use npm. So, npm is a package manager designed for Node.js packages which is inevitably the largest software registry. Using npm, users get benefits like publishing, installing, and developing code packages and hence React.js is one of the most famous Javascript frameworks, the number of packages available here is insanely huge. There are dynamic libraries like UI component libraries that help with complex things in React.js.

5. Easy to Test

React.js is designed in a such way that it turns out to be very user-friendly for testing. Let’s look at some instances where React proves to be super easy to test.

As compared to React.js, the traditional UI browser is a hassle to set up while React.js requires minimal configuration for testing.
Traditional UI browsers are also found to provide slow testing but React.js on the other hand can run a great number of test suites at a single time.
There’s no need for browsers for testing using React.js and it tests quickly just using the node command-line.

There is a huge variety of Javascript testing frameworks present on the internet that can help users in testing, testing frameworks like Jasmine, AVA, and Tape.

Summary

In this blog, we talked about React.js being the most-used UI library using Javascript to create modern applications.React.js has proved itself to be unique by its out-of-the-box features such as, variety of components, JSX, etc.

As you go on and work on slightly advanced projects, you’ll feel the need for libraries, and there are a ton of libraries to make the process easier in React, choose libraries that solve your problem and go on to design great projects with React.js.