This year one of the goals is to learn React. First of all its the language the developers in my team use for the frontend so it comes in handy to know something about it. Secondly I find out that doing test automation would be a lot easier to have some basic knowledge about programming. After learning some basic JavaScript it is time to diving into the worls of React.
In this series of articles, I want to describe my experiences while learning this programming language.
What is React?
In started discovering what React is and what it can do by watching some basic video’s in the trend of “React for Beginners”. These videos were very superficial and often the knowledge disappeared after a day. For me, doing has more effect than watching videos and reading books. Nevertheless, to understand what React is, it is important to start with a bit of theory.
In this first part, I want to capture a few key words and important things picked up during watching some video’s, that will enhance the understanding of what React is and can .
React is:
- Created and maintained by Facebook
- An Open Source JavaScript library for creating (complex) user interfaces
- Not responsible for routing or making HTTP request only for creating user interfaces
- Handling the view layer of the application
- A way to create large web applications that can change data without reloading the webpage
- Using a simple syntax called JSX. This is a mix of HTML with JavaScript
- React has building blocks which makes it easier to build a page. JavaScript needs every single step to be described (so called imperative approach)
- Using a declarative approach
- Easy to learn. Some basic knowledge about HTML, CSS and JS is recommended
- An library that can be used in any tech stack
- All about components, broken down in multiple smaller components which can be reused ( Component Based Architecture)
During reading and watching video’s some keywords kept coming back. These included components, props, state and events. Throughout this series of articles, I hope to clarify what these concepts mean and how to use them.