React for Modern WebDevelopment: Trends and Best Practices

In today's fast-paced world, staying informed about industry trends and innovative tools can be beneficial to someone's success. With React's powerful features and growing capabilities, we will see a rise on usage of the React Library among future developers. Today, We will discuss the three Best Practices/Trends that React Developers are adopting, using examples from my Software Management Tracker Project.

After reading this article, you will gain insights into Component-Based Architecture, State Management + Data Fetching, and lastly Routing and Navigation. If you want to check out more about my code, feel free to fork my repo at [(https://github.com/AricayaJohn/ProjectManagement_ReactApplication)].

We will start with Component-Based Architecture :
Developers are moving towards component-based style of coding because of the benefits that it provide:

1. It is designed to create reusable pieces for your app giving you the power to use that code again, saving you time and effort.
2. Each component works on its own, which means that fixing or updating one part of the application does not disrupt the whole structure of your project.
3. Easier Testing and Scalability. With pieces broken into different parts anyone can work on different parts of the project without having any conflicts with other team members work.

Example: The App component displays routes
to different pages. It integrates multiple components in one page.

import React from "react";
import { Routes, Route } from "react-router-dom";
import Home from "./pages/Home";
import About from "./pages/About";
import Login from "./pages/Login";
import EmploeeTask from "./pages/EmployeeTask";

function App() {
    return (
        <Routes>
            <Route path="/" element={<Home />} />
            <Route path="/about" element={<About />} />
            <Route path="/login" element={<Login />} />
            <Route path="/employee-task/:id" element = {<EmploeeTask />} />
        </Routes>
    );
}

export default App;

The next topic we are going to expore is State Management + Data Fetching

This trend is crucial when we take our application to the next level. This needs React's useState anduseEffect` hooks that helps us simplify changes in our application and data.
Here is the benefits of this proccess:

1. useState helps you keep track of changes in your forms, buttons and other onChange features.
2. useEffect lets you run and get data from your document file which is the API(application programming interface).
3. By using state and effects in your components, React can help a smoother and better user experience for your users.

Here is an example from my project that uses useState and useEffect:
In the function the useState updates the state of the employees when needed.
In the function the useEffect fetches/gets the employees data from the server and gives a response.

In the home Component, by using the useState and useEffect we are given the capability to display our data, change our data, and add more to our data.

The last Trend and Best Practice that we will discuss is the Routing and Navigation.
In my project I used a Single Page Application(SPAs) because of this benefits:
1) This functionality makes the transition between different pages quick and easy, without reloading the page.
2)Clear URLs helps create and manage userfriendly navigation for users
3) I was able to organize the structure of the nested routes or multiple routes. This keeps related pages together and easier to understand.

Here is an example of Routing and Navigation

These syntax imports the React Components that will be used as different pages in the application. Each object specifies the path to which component will be displayed when clicked or visited. This setup allows the application to handle navigation without reloading the entire page. This also organized the different parts on how it will be displayed on the URL.

These practices: component-based architecture, effective state management + data fetching, and efficient routing + navigation, are key to building complex and user-friendly React application.

For more details, check out my github :[(https://github.com/AricayaJohn)]
and Linkedin [(https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-aricaya/)]