Free React.js Fundamentals Course (opens in new tab)

Here's a look at the folder structure we're using for our app: https://i.imgur.com/wc7DyOA.png

/actions: Flux action creators

/components: These are all the JSX React components (the presentation layer) - so there are subfolders like "pages", "controls", etc.

/reducers: These are Redux reducers - they're the logic that handles all of the application state

/services: This is what your question was really about. We use basic ES6 modules for services, with methods like "fetchUser(id)" which use the new JS Fetch API behind the scenes. We then have redux-thunk and redux-promise middleware so we can easily offload state manipulation to these services without actually putting state logic in them.

I've set up a few React projects at this point and this always seems to keep a nice separation of logic. I'm never asking where data is coming from or where it's going. I think Redux has been the biggest difference maker when dealing with all of these parts.

It's no framework, but it's composed of well understood libraries, each with their own important function. You build the structure out yourself so you know exactly how it works, and the pattern will be very familiar to anyone who has used React before.

I spent a month playing with the different libraries and settled on the following core modules for my frontend:

* redux: Keeps track of all the state (UI and domain) in a single object.

* immutable.js: Obviously for the immutable data structures which plays nicely within the React ecosystem. It also has a rich set of data structures that aren't found natively within JavaScript. For example I make heavy use of Records to simulate domain models.

* react-router: For routing within the application.

* superagent: For ajax calls.

* reselect: If using redux you'll cherry pick various parts of the state tree for your components. If any of the data used within components can be derived then reselect comes into play nicely.

It took longer than I had hoped but I finally have a strong set of libraries and project layout I'm happy and productive with.

React seems to emphasize using regular javascript and existing NPM modules where possible. Superagent [1] seems to be a popular one, but you can find more on React's wiki [2].

If you start using a flux implementation like Redux, there are other interesting things you can do to handle api requests [3].

[1] https://github.com/visionmedia/superagent

[2] https://github.com/facebook/react/wiki/Complementary-Tools#d...

[3] http://redux.js.org/docs/advanced/index.html

We're moving all our Angular code to React/Redux. Angular 2.0 seemed quite a bit more convoluted than React, even if it is saner than Angular 1.x.

Having simple and easy to create components is a major win. No one on my team ever liked or used directives much, as they were overly complicated.

Redux has been a huge win. In dev builds, every state change is output via a redux middleware, so it is easy to watch how state updates and transitions. In prod we plan on storing state updates and allowing them to be sent to support for trouble shooting. Even have plans for an overlay to allow support to step through those changes with a simple interface.

For API calls I use isomorphic-fetch[1]. To use it in redux I use redux-promise-middleware[2]

[1]: https://github.com/matthew-andrews/isomorphic-fetch

[2]: https://github.com/pburtchaell/redux-promise-middleware/blob...

For me it comes down to what language are you more comfortable using. Plain old JavaScript with Babel ? React TypeScript ? Angular 2

Angular 2 is much more OO style GUI lib - if you've ever worked with stuff with WPF you'll recognize the patterns immediately - focus on DI, property bindings and attributes, class based design, etc. It really works well with TS and IDEs

React + TS is quirky to say the least - not just the base lib but the ecosystem - for example immutable.js is annoying to use with TS (creating typed records). It can be done but I'm not sure it's worth the effort.

But one huge consideration is that React has been "out there" for a while now - there's a ton of quality work available on top of it. In Angular 2 even the basics are in flux like animations and stuff like material design components are nowhere near in sight.

There's a touch more than views to consider, e.g. do you have to build or want a native mobile app? Angular 2.0 will be under heavy development whereas I think React has matured to the point where a lot of effort is going into ease of use and performance [1]. I also found the React tool chain (using webpack/babel5) very slightly more sane than grunt/gulp once my project grew beyond "Hello TODO". But the JS tooling is absolutely crazy no matter what platform is decided.

I'm using redux for API calls - I like the "single store" approach despite drawbacks vs. flux (or multiple stores).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RJf2jYzs8A

I've only just started using React but I've been a Django developer for a few years. As I'm starting to use React, I'm still working with Django and Django-Rest-Framework for my backend. It's probably a little heavy weight but you could use something like Flask or whatever equivalent light weight Web framework is in your language of choice.

I'm a big Angular fan though I've done some React stuff as well. I think a reason to go with Angular 2 is the batteries-included approach (and TypeScript is cool once you get used to it, though certainly not required). With React you do end up having to hunt down libraries for everything beyond the view layer, which can mean a lot of random 3rd party libraries in various states of support. The flipside is the ecosystem is growing so could overcome those challenges and the architecture is simple and elegant. Honestly, I think ng2 is going to be really popular despite the backlash (and lack of HN representation) and so far the response I'm seeing is really positive once people dig in. I don't think you can go wrong with either though.

I recommend going with a deep architecture like React with GraphQL/Relay. Nothing like the React/Relay combo in the Angular word.

Here is why Relay matters:

https://gist.github.com/idibidiart/49a095b6bc528638f34f

I really like axios for the api calls, super simple and uses the promises syntax that we use throughout our app.

we are using Bluebird (to handle the Promises) along with Axios to do the api calls.

Had the same problem. Now diving into learning react.

From my point of view, React brings two important ideas to web app development:

1. The virtual DOM. When I'm writing jQuery-based code, I have to write both a component template and code that updates the DOM in response to input; when I'm writing code for a virtual DOM, the component template is sufficient to update the DOM and I don't have to write that extra code, so there are fewer chances for bugs to creep in.

2. HTML-like syntax embedded in Javascript (JSX). I didn't like this at first until I configured Sublime Text to highlight embedded HTML correctly. Embedded HTML has pros and cons, but I think it's a net positive.

React projects also typically include new tech like ES2015, webpack, hot code reloading, and Redux with its time-traveling debugger. You can build your own stack that uses a virtual DOM library, embedded HTML, ES2015, and so on, but it's helpful to start with a common stack that many people understand. That's why React is interesting.

- Great way to build component based UIs

- Combined with immutable state manager like Redux, it can dramatically simplify front end development.

I used to hate working on website frontends. Tangled webs of event handlers and dom mutation. React got rid of the mess and I once again enjoy working on the front end.

Let me provide a different viewpoint. React is important for ClojureScript developers for slightly different reasons. It is a well-maintained solution for quickly rendering component-based applications based on immutable data structures.

In other words, you can think of the user interface as a function of your app's state, where the state is neatly kept in one place, instead of smeared all over the code. And since ClojureScript has excellent immutable data structures, you get great performance right out of the box. Things that do not need to be re-rendered aren't.

So, when React arrived it fit like a well-designed glove. Suddenly one could easily create complex apps with few lines of code and great performance.

As a side note, there are some aspects of React that we don't care about. JSX is one: various lisp-like languages have been using vector/list syntax for HTML for years, so in ClojureScript you don't have to use a separate syntax or pre-process your files: your functions just return nested vectors with HTML elements. Much more natural.

To build on what hathawsh said:

1. Virtual DOM -- but this also includes DOM diffing, which makes it extremely efficient to re-render "the entire app" whenever a change happens (because you're not actually rendering it all but you largely don't have to know that).

2. JSX -- but unlike HTML this is just syntactic sugar for the underlying API. It may look like someone got HTML in your JS but it's really just syntax for nesting components and the rest is plain old JavaScript (compared to HTML templates where you have to learn a proprietary template language to do the same things you can already do in JS).

3. Unidirectional (one-way) data flow with pure components. This isn't enforced by React itself but if you stick to constructing your components this way (which companion libraries like Redux encourage you to do), your entire application becomes easier to reason about because you can think of your React code as one giant render function.

A lot of these concepts have appeared in other libraries and frameworks but prior to React we used to think that Angular 1's two way bindings were the holy grail (despite the countless complexities it brought in real applications).

At first I was really turned off by JSX. HTML in your JavaScript? Yuck! Then I migrated a 12k lines JS + 4k lines Angular templates to TypeScript. I didn't get any of the benefit of static typing in all of those html files. That was really upsetting to me. Getting compile time static safety on JSX components is awesome.

No one mentioned code sharing between server side and the client side! (There are other ways to achieve this other frameworks/libraries are catching up) If you have a node.js server you can use react for both server side rendering and client side rendering.. So that you get the SS rendering advantages like fast initial page load and SEO but also have a very dynamic web app after the initial render.

It fundamentally changes the way we think about frontend web development in a very positive way. It makes things more testable, reliable, fast, and easier to write. Combined with things like Redux we also get crazy features like time travel.

In addition to everyone else's replies, React Native is starting to take off as a next-generation Cordova: Javascript code using native APIs and native UI components rather than using JS and HTML in WebView using native APIs.

It's like if you've been programming in C all your life and suddenly discover python

Thanks a lot, as a backend distributed systems person I have hard time understanding UI in general. I'm half way through your videos now, and for the first time I could grok what React is all about.

Thanks for this class. I'm just starting it. One question: How do I know when to do/start the curriculum? Will it be pointed out when I get far enough in the 'lecture' material?

It would probably be best to understand the fundamentals and then to figure out how components of the "stack" are wired together. This might help be a starting point - https://github.com/gaearon/react-makes-you-sad

Don't start with a full stack, it can be overwhelming. Start with a minimal toolkit and only add stuff when you actually run into pain points that it can solve. This guide is a good one:

https://github.com/petehunt/react-howto

Angular is harder for beginners because it has everything loaded. React has fewer consepts. When learning & for non-complex apps, you don't even need flux etc. extra stuff.

http://jamesknelson.com/learn-raw-react-no-jsx-flux-es6-webp...

I like this one: https://github.com/davezuko/react-redux-starter-kit

Thank you so much! Means the world.

Link for those interested: https://egghead.io/series/build-your-first-react-js-applicat...

It's an HTML5 video, so you can adjust the speed with JS if you can get the right element. e.g. to set the playback speed to 120%, you can do:

  document.getElementsByTagName('video')[0].playbackRate = 1.2;

in the JS console.

For what it's worth, all the JSBins with the react code don't work. I'm using Chrome. I keep getting Uncaught ReferenceError: ReactDOM is not defined.

I fiddled with it a bit but I couldn't get any of the examples working. <shrug>

What specifically about the licensing? This is an actual question, not advocacy. IIRC, Facebook had a provision that disallowed use of React for a ridiculously broad range of offenses with respect to any of FBs intellectual property but that they narrowed it considerably last year to a more reasonable: you aren't allowed to use any of our intellectual property in React if you dispute our ownership of that specific property.

I could be characterizing this incorrectly, or you could be referring to something I'm not aware of, so what specifically are you objecting to?

I don't know how much the course goes into this, but it might help you get started to keep in mind that it's not HTML in JS, it's xml-like JSX syntax as syntactic sugar for regular JS function calls.

It's no more "embedded HTML" than something like $("<p>").text("lolwut").appendTo("body"), just written with a different syntax. Good luck!

Check out the other courses. I think they're what you're looking for :)

We're using React/Redux to replace our Angular front end to MVC WebAPI. But we're also slowly replacing our MVC WebAPI backend to Node.js/Express. AD, LDAP, Tedious-Pooling, etc make it work perfectly in our MS environment.

i started using it for one of my project. using react as a view works well without having to change backend

It's possible: http://ngreact.github.io/ngReact/

Thanks so much! Utah FTW.

Huge compliment. Thank you SO much!

Thank you so much!

Besitos.

Yup. Using teachable.com