DEV Community

Cover image for React.js | Learning path for beginners
Kat Holder
Kat Holder

Posted on

React.js | Learning path for beginners

Every front-end developer and web developer knows how frustrating and painful it is to write the same code at multiple places. If they need to add a button at multiple pages they are forced to do a lot of code. Developers using other frameworks face the challenges to rework on most codes even when crafting components that changed frequently. Developers wanted a framework or library which allows them to break down complex components and reuse the codes to complete their projects faster.

React is the most popular JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It is fast, flexible and it also has a strong community sitting online to help you every time. The coolest thing about React is it’s based on components, you breakdown your complex code into individual pieces i.e. components and that helps developers in organizing their code in a better way. A lot of companies are moving to React and that’s the reason most of the beginners and experienced developers also expanding their knowledge learning this library.

There are some few things that we should know before learning react:

  1. Basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
  2. Some ES6 features of JavaScript like • Let and Const • Arrow Functions • Class and ‘this’ keyword
  3. Fundamentals of NodeJS & Code Editors

Learning React.js

Fundamentals: Now once you learn all the above things it’s time to jump into React. Understand the basic concept of React first. Here’s an overview:
React is a JavaScript library developed by Facebook to build interactive User Interfaces. It follows the Component-based architecture which means you will divide your whole UI part into reusable components; all are made separately and finally fitted into a parent component which is then rendered. Below are some important topics to learn in React.js.

• Component Architecture.
• State: Basically ‘state’ holds synchronous variable. If you change the value of a state variable then the change is reflected immediately in all the places that particular variable is used.
• Props: are just like arguments passed in a function or method. In React props (arguments) are passed into an HTML tag as input argument.
• Functional Components, Class Components.
• Styling (CSS) in React.
• Learn how to connect to APIs with React apps.
• React Router: React routing will help you to understand how routing works in an application of React. How to load the content of a specific page or how to redirect to a specific page using React Router. For example, to redirect from the ‘home’ page to the ‘blog’ page you will have to set routing so that it can only display the content of the ‘blog’ page. Once you have the understanding of React Router you can make some projects like A simple CURD application or Hacker News clone
• Webpack: Webpack is a module bundler in JavaScript that helps you to maintain dependencies as static files for your project so developers don’t have to do it. Webpack also comes with loaders. Loaders help run specific tasks around your project.
• Server Rendering: Learning this concept will help you to create components in the server and render that as HTML in your browser and when all the JavaScript modules are downloaded in the browser, React takes the stage. It’s one of the coolest features to React and it can be used with any of the back-end technologies.
• Redux: In a complex application, you will have to manage states across components. Redux which is a javascript library solves this problem and it helps you to maintain the application states. In Redux you store all your states in a single source.

Top comments (0)