React.js

Tiago Rodrigues

@trodrigues

JS/Frontend developer at contentful.com

What is React.js?

  • A library for creating user interfaces
  • Not a framework
  • Implements the "view" part of MV*

What is react.js?

  • React components describe:
    • The structure of the UI
    • The behavior of the UI

What is react.js?

  • Heavy focus on JS features
  • Small API
    • Top level API
    • Components API

What is react.js?

Why React.js?

  • Closer link between view logic and representation
  • Components create a virtual representation of the UI (Virtual DOM)
  • Promotes a cleaner data flow *

Why React.js?

  • What is view logic anyway?
    • Fetching data to be rendered
    • Preparing data to be rendered
    • Handling view event handlers

Why React.js?

  • What's the Virtual DOM?
    • Your template is not rendered straight into HTML
    • Creates an internal tree representation

Why React.js?

  • How does it work?
    • When something changes the tree nodes are compared
    • The actual DOM is only changed if the tree changed

Why React.js?

  • Advantages?
    • Improves rendering speed *
    • Allows rendering to other outputs

Why React.js?

Getting started

Getting started

Getting started

App.js

// ES6 modules
import React, { Component } from 'react';

// ES6 classes
export default class App extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <h1>Hello, world.</h1>
    );
  }
}

myfirstcomponent.js

import React, { Component } from 'react';

export default class MyFirstComponent extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <p>This is my first component</p>
    );
  }
}

Branch: step1

Using our component

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import './MyFirstComponent';

export default class App extends Component {
  render() {
    // This won't really work
    return (
      <h1>Hello, world.</h1>
      <MyFirstComponent />
    );
  }
}

Branch: step1

Using our component

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import './MyFirstComponent';

export default class App extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        <h1>Hello, world.</h1>
        <MyFirstComponent />
      </div>
    );
  }
}

Branch: step1

What is JSX?

  • HTML/XML syntax inside JS
  • Transformed into JS
  • Just sugar on top of React.DOM
  • You can use React.DOM directly

What is JSX?

What is JSX?

Event handlers

export default class MyFirstComponent extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <button onClick={this.handleClick}>Do stuff</button>
    );
  }

  handleClick() {
    alert('Stuff is done!');
  }
}

Branch: step2

Using state

  • this.state represents the component state
  • When state changes, the component is re-rendered
  • For that reason, state should be as small as possible

Using state

  • Don't store computed data in state
  • Don't store components or markup in state

Using state

Setting state

export default class MyFirstComponent extends Component {
  constructor(props){
    super(props);
    this.state = { count: 0 };
  }

  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        <p>Clicked {this.state.count} times</p>
        <button onClick={this.handleClick.bind(this)}>Do stuff</button>
      </div>
    );
  }

  handleClick() {
    this.setState({
      count: this.state.count + 1
    });
  }
};

Branch: step3

Computed data

export default class MyFirstComponent extends Component {
  constructor(props){
    super(props);
    this.state = {
      items: [
        {label: 'item 1', quantity: 4},
        {label: 'item 2', quantity: 3}
      ]
    };
  }

  render() {
    var total = this.state.items.reduce((total, item) => total+item.quantity, 0);
    return (
      <p>Total: {total}</p>
    );
  }
};

Branch: step4

Generated markup

export default class MyFirstComponent extends Component {
  constructor(props){
    super(props);
    this.state = {
      items: [
        {label: 'item 1', quantity: 4},
        {label: 'item 2', quantity: 3}
      ]
    };
  }

  render() {
    var items = this.state.items.map(item => {
      return <li>Item: {item.label}, Quantity: {item.quantity}</li>;
    });
    return (
      <ul>{items}</ul>
    );
  }
};

Branch: step5

Using props

  • immutable parameters passed down by parent components
  • change when parent component is re-rendered

using props

using props

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import MyFirstComponent from './MyFirstComponent';

export default class App extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <MyFirstComponent message="hello world" />
    );
  }
}

Branch: step6

using props

import React, { Component } from 'react';

export default class MyFirstComponent extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <h1>{this.props.message}</h1>
    );
  }
};

Branch: step6

lifecycle methods

  • render
  • getInitialState (or constructor)
  • getDefaultProps
  • componentWillMount
  • componentDidMount
  • componentWillReceiveProps
  • shouldComponentUpdate
  • componentWillUpdate
  • componentDidUpdate
  • componentWillUnmount

Lifecycle methods

Getting data

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import axios from 'axios';

const API_URL = 'http://pokeapi.co/';
const API_PATH = API_URL + 'api/v1/';

export default class Pokemon extends Component {
  constructor(props){
    super(props);
    this.state = {name: '', image: ''};
  }

  componentDidMount() {...}

  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        <h1>{this.state.name}</h1>
        <img src={this.state.image} />
      </div>
    );
  }
};

Branch: step7

Getting data

import axios from 'axios';

const API_URL = 'http://pokeapi.co/';
const API_PATH = API_URL + 'api/v1/';

export default class Pokemon extends Component {
  constructor(props){...}

  componentDidMount() {
    axios.get(API_PATH + `pokemon/${this.props.id}/`)
    .then(response => {
      var name = response.data.name;
      axios.get(API_URL + response.data.sprites[0].resource_uri)
      .then(response => this.setState({
        name: name,
        image: API_URL + response.data.image
      }));
    });
  }

  render() {...}
};

Branch: step7

separating concerns

/* ... */

export default class Pokemon extends Component {
  constructor(props){
    super(props);
    this.state = {name: '', image: ''};
  }

  componentDidMount() {
    axios.get(API_PATH + `pokemon/${this.props.id}/`)
    .then(response => {
      var name = response.data.name;
      axios.get(API_URL + response.data.sprites[0].resource_uri)
      .then(response => this.setState({
        name: name,
        image: API_URL + response.data.image
      }));
    });
  }

  render() {
    return (
      <PokemonDisplay name={this.state.name} image={this.state.image} />
    );
  }
};

Branch: step8

separating concerns

import React, { Component } from 'react';

export default class PokemonDisplay extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        <h1>{this.state.name}</h1>
        <img src={this.state.image} />
      </div>
    );
  }
};

Branch: step8

Higher order components

  • Application architecture
  • Patterns for dealing with data
  • One way data flow
  • No official implementation

What is flux?

Components

  • Views
  • Stores
  • Actions
  • Dispatcher

Dispatcher

  • Usually a singleton
  • Listens to actions (events)
  • Registers callbacks which respond to actions

Views

  • React.js view/controllers
  • Get data from Stores
  • Use that data to set view state
  • Fire Actions with metadata

Stores

  • Manage application data and state
  • Not a model: can contain many models
  • Can contain app state
  • Should be concerned with a single domain
  • Listen to actions which mutate its data
  • Fire change events when state is changed
  • Stores listen to each other via waitFor

Stores

var TodoStore = {
  __proto__: EventEmitter.prototype,
  
  _todos: [],

  getAll: function() {
    return this._todos;
  },

  emitChange: function() {
    this.emit('change');
  },

  addChangeListener: function(callback) {
    this.on('change', callback);
  }
};

...

Stores

...

AppDispatcher.register(function(action) {

  switch(action.actionType) {
    case TodoConstants.TODO_CREATE:
      TodoStore._todos.push(action.text);
      TodoStore.emitChange();
      break;
  }
});

Actions

  • Simple helper methods
  • Trigger events to dispatcher with metadata

Actions

var TodoActions = {

  create(text) {
    AppDispatcher.dispatch({
      actionType: TodoConstants.TODO_CREATE,
      text: text
    });
  }

};

Data flow

Flux implementations

  • http://fluxxor.com/
  • https://github.com/acdlite/flummox
  • https://goatslacker.github.io/alt/
  • https://github.com/kenwheeler/mcfly
  • https://github.com/jmreidy/fluxy
  • http://deloreanjs.com/
  • http://martyjs.org/
  • http://www.tuxedojs.org/
  • https://github.com/yahoo/fluxible
  • https://github.com/elierotenberg/nexus-flux
  • https://github.com/spoike/refluxjs
  • https://github.com/fdecampredon/rx-flux

 

Flux implementations

More at:

http://slides.com/trodrigues/flux-implementations

Relay and graphql

  • Upcoming framework for data fetching in React
  • Allows components to specify their data dependencies in GraphQL
  • Relay centralizes and optimizes queries

relay and graphql

  • Data is cached and reused efficiently
  • Components only get the data they need
  • Data passed via props,
  • When props change, components re-render

relay and graphql

relay and graphql

react ecosystem

  • Reusable shared components
  • Good documentation
  • Best practices articles

react ecosystem

  • react-router / react-router-component
  • react-async
  • react-grid
  • react-dnd
  • react-hot-keys
  • ...

components

components

Resources

That's all folks!

 

Thank you!

Made with Slides.com