Introduction

If you are a Web Developer then you must have come across various front-end libraries and frameworks among which most popular ones being React, Angular and Vue. These frameworks are in Javascript thus making it easier to learn these frameworks as every front-end developer learns basic JavaScript and DOM manipulation. In this article, we will see about React and Its features and know why most developers love ReactJS.

React is an open-source JavaScript library used for building user interfaces (UI) or front-end applications. It was created by Facebook and is now maintained by Facebook and a community of individual developers and companies.

React is a popular choice for building web applications because it allows developers to create reusable UI components that can be used across multiple pages or applications. React uses a declarative approach to programming, which means that developers describe how the UI should look, and React handles the details of updating the UI as the data changes.

History of ReactJS

In the year 2011 due to the massive userbase of Facebook, it became very difficult to manage Facebook Ads, to provide a better user experience, Jordan Walker, one of Facebook's software engineers worked on the FaxJS prototype and created React. Due to its revolutionary approach to DOM manipulation, React became very popular and Instagram also wanted to adopt this technology. Due to this Facebook made React open-sourceable. Most of this was done by Pete Hunt.

Creating Basic React Project

To create your very basic ReactJS project, first of all, you should have Node installed on your machine and then by using the below command it is very easy to make a basic react project.

npx create-react-app myApp

-> npx - This command enables us to create a new React application without actually installing the package. Here npx stands for Node Package eXecute.

Features of React

Some of the Key features of React are:-

• Component-based architecture: React uses a component-based architecture to break down the UI into reusable, modular parts called components. This makes it easier to manage and update the UI, and also promotes code reusability.

• Virtual DOM: React uses a virtual DOM (Document Object Model) which is a lightweight copy of the actual DOM. This allows React to efficiently update the UI by only updating the parts that have changed, rather than re-rendering the entire page.

• JSX: React uses JSX, a syntax extension that allows you to write HTML-like code in your JavaScript code. This makes it easier to write and understand the UI code.

• One-way data flow: React uses a one-way data flow, which means that data flows in one direction from the parent component to its child components. This makes it easier to manage and debug the state of the UI.

• Declarative programming: React is declarative, which means that you describe what you want the UI to look like, and React takes care of the details of how to achieve that. This makes the code more predictable and easier to reason about.

• React Native: React also has a mobile development framework called React Native, which allows you to build native mobile apps using the same React syntax and components as web apps. This can save time and effort in building and maintaining apps for multiple platforms.

• Community: React has a large and active community of developers, which means that there are many resources and tools available for learning and using React. The community also contributes to the development of React, which means that new features and improvements are regularly added to the library.

• Backed by Facebook: React was developed by Facebook, which means that it has the backing of a large and influential technology company. This has helped to increase the visibility and adoption of React and has also ensured that it is well-supported and maintained.

These features makes React a very popular choice for creating beautiful User Interfaces for Front-End developers.

These were some features and a brief introduction about ReactJS and why is it so popular. So I am sure you will use React for building interesting websites. Happy Coding 😀.