Hey there Reactoholic!
Do you want to accelerate your coding command?
If so, we have done all the research for you and listed crucial ReactJS best practices in this post.
Let’s explore them together!
1.Small & Function-specific components
The developers can use react to have huge components which can execute numerous tasks at the same time.
But the best practice to design components is to keep each one of them small so that individual components respond to one function only.
As a result, a single component will render a particular part of the page or alter a particular behavior.
There are the following perks of this practice:
Testing and maintenance can be easier with function-specific components
You can reuse every single component across many projects
Set of components that execute specific function can be used by the whole community
Performance optimization is possible with smaller components because bigger components are harder to maintain.
Smaller components can be easily updated
The creation of multiple components varies from one organization to another. But one thing here to remember is that you can create as many components as you require and recombine them when needed after achieving satisfactory results.
2.Choose functional over class components
In React version 16.8, the concept of Hooks was introduced. It enables us to use the lifecycle method, state, and various other React features inside functional components.
Earlier, these features were available only within the class components, but now things have changed.
With hooks, you can reuse stateful logic without thinking about the hierarchy of the components. This feature of React makes data management easier with the help of hooks.
But this doesn’t mean that you should restructure all your class components to function-specific components. Instead, you can use functional components and include hooks for managing the state.
The reusability of each component is crucial. So keep each new component to less required by sticking to the thumb rule:
1 function = 1 component
With this, you can enhance the reusability of the components. It means you should skip trying to make a new component for a function if there is already a component for that specific function.
By reusing components, you can achieve consistency, and you are doing a huge favor to the community.
Conversely, when a component becomes extremely high and difficult to maintain, it is preferable to break it into smaller pieces or components.
Let’s take an example to understand better:
After breaking the bigger component into small components, you can go further and create button components, which will handle icons.
After that, whenever you need a button, you will have a component in place to use. This modularity will offer you to cover the same code cases.
You have to make your components abstract but not complex.
3.Make PropTypes your friend
Defining components PropTypes is extremely useful. Without PropTypes or other forms of type check, there is always a risk of passing the wrong data type to a component which could lead to abnormal behavior or even crash in your app.
It is highly recommended to use PropTypes in the React components to prevent unforeseen issues to the user.
You can use a variety of validators in React such as bool, array, string, func, number, and so on….
It allows you to declare that prop is a javaScript type.
These are React component best practices to know all props and their respective types. If not used properly, the React will throw a glitch on the console as soon as an incorrect datatype has been passed to a component. With this, you can easily catch errors during the development phase.
4.Comment only where required
Some coders have this habit of commenting on each step, and some don’t comment at all.
You must comment only where it is required the most.
Commenting in your code serves two purposes:
Visually impressive code:
You can easily prevent potential contradictions between the code and comment in case you need to change the code later.
Easy to Find:
Also, it becomes easier to understand the code even for a non-technical person with accurate commenting.
5.Use the function’s name for the component
It’s always a great practice to name your component after the name of the function that it executes so that it can be recognized effortlessly.
For example, if you are naming components — ProductTable — it shows quickly what the components do. Conversely, if you name it based on the need of your code, it may confuse you in the future and make you scratch your head for remembering its functioning.
Another great example is to name a component Avatar so that you can use it anywhere you want: for users, authors, or in comments.
If you would name the component AuthorAvatar, it would be limited to just one utility (author) of the component.
Hence, naming components after the name of the function is useful and more discoverable.
6.Perform Tests
No code is complete without proper testing.
Once you have followed the above best practices, it’s time to perform correct testing to ensure that there is no error and the application runs just as you expected.
Testing can be done in different ways for your React app.
We have listed the popular ones right below:
Unit Testing
One of the most popular and used testing is unit testing. Numerous frameworks are available out there for unit testing. This is the most basic kind of testing and allows you to test even the smallest units of the code.
Component Testing
Every entity in React is a component, and it trails the component-oriented approach. One can reuse components individually, which can be tested effectively. This type of testing is important in React.
You can use any of the various React Testing Libraries available out there. These libraries offer simple React DOM testing utilities that motivate best testing practices. Many developers have benefited from these libraries, and you, too, can make the most out of these.
End to End
This testing is done on applications as a whole. It copies how users will click through an application and test it on the browser. JavaScript (or anything that can easily run on a browser) offers a Cypress framework for smooth end-to-end testing.
You can use Cypress for testing the front-end application, and its setup is pretty easy and runs in no time.
This allows testing on the realistic browser environment and is highly recommended by top-notch developers for React apps.
Tools
You can organize all React components by using tools such as Bit.
These tools allow you to reuse and maintain code. Apart from that, it also helps code to become more detectable and provides better team collaboration while building components. Plus, code can be synchronized throughout the projects.
7.Keep stateful aspects separated from rendering
React components can be stateful or stateless.
Stateful components are those which save information about the state of the component and convey crucial context.
Conversely, stateless components don’t have any memory and can’t provide context to other UI parts. They only receive input from parent component(s) and output JSX elements. Developers can scale and reuse stateless components, and these are the same as pure functions in JavaScript.
The best React practice is to separate stateful data-loading logic from rendering stateless logic.
You can use the perfect combination of stateful for data-loading logic and stateless component to show that data. It lowers the complexity of various components.
React version v16.8 has a new feature — React Hooks that write stateful function-specific components. It eliminates the requirement for class-based components.
For say, your app is fetching data on the mount, and you want to manage this data in the main component and pass the complicated render job to the sub-component as props.
That’s when you use stateful and stateless components.
Conclusion
So you discovered the best practices in React.
Hopefully, it will benefit you and help you to avoid errors on your way to developing robust react applications.
React is evolving every day, and it’s a great idea to keep yourself updated with the development trends and best practices to keep your coding as easy as possible.
So use the above practices & build the best React apps.
