Whether you are just starting to learn React or you’re already full-time working professionally in it, there are many tools (both free and paid) that you can use in your personal or professional projects. They are always beneficial as they help speed up the workflow or get things done quickly.
For React developers to take full advantage of the library so that coding becomes easier and faster, here are 7 of the best tools out there that you as a React dev should bookmark and use as a reference whenever needed.
1. Reactide
What is it?
Reactide is a dedicated IDE for React web application development.
If you ever wanted to have a separate IDE (not just an editor) just to fulfill all of your React development needs then Reactide is the tool you need right now. It is the first IDE ever built and released just for React web application development.
Features:
Extensible: it runs an integrated Node server and custom browser simulator eliminating the need to configure any servers or build tools.
Easy configuration: you can run a single command to streamline universal configuration.
Components visualization: you can navigate through a live representation of your app’s architecture.
Open-sourced: the code for this powerful tool is hosted on its GitHub repo so you can not only download it for Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms but also contribute to it.
2. Bit
What is it?
Bit is a standard infrastructure for components for autonomous micro-frontend/web app development.
Bit is a collection of almost everything you and your team may need to have fast releases, great consistency, and collaboration at a high scale to build components.
Features:
Split app development: with Bit, there is no need to do monolithic development. Instead, you work on modular apps composed of features built by teams working simultaneously.
Hosting and resuing: you and your team can build together a reusable component for your organization and then collaborate on new builds in the cloud.
Continuous release and component upgrades: you can deliver updates to app components with decoupled versions and release pipelines.
Great at managing docs: Bit makes sure every component is documented, organized, and discoverable by anyone.
3. Storybook
What is it?
Storybook is an open-source tool for building UI components and pages in isolation.
It helps very much in streamlining UI development along with testing components and documenting them.
Features:
Durable interfaces: it comes with a sandbox environment to build the UIs you need in isolation so that more of the edge cases and states of an element is covered.
Testing UI easily: every time you write a story, you get a test case along with it. Along with this, you can reuse stories in your unit tests.
Document and share UI: everything in Storybook is searchable with an option to share each story with your teammates for a single source of truth.
Available for multiple tech stacks: along with React, Storybook is also available for Vue, Angular, Web Components, Ember, HTML, and more!
4. React Developer Tools
What is it?
React Developer Tools adds React debugging tools to the Chrome Developer Tools.
This extension is so popular and useful that it’s recommended to install and use by everyone starting out to learn React. With extensive debugging with this tool, you can expect better bug busting throughout the app development process!
Features:
Inspection: you can inspect the individual React component hierarchies in the Chrome Developer Tools.
The components tab: shows you all of the root components that were rendered on the page along with the sub-components if available.
The profiler tab: this tab allows you to record performance information.
Deeper inspection: you can inspect and edit the selected component’s current props and state them in the panel right from this extension.
5. React Cosmos
What is it?
React Cosmos is a sandbox for developing and testing UI components in isolation.
With React Cosmos you don’t need to settle for the boring localhost:3000 dev environment and you can instead test and develop all components in isolation.
Features:
Visual TDD: with Test Driven Development in React Cosmos you can develop one component at a time, isolate the UI and then iterate on it quickly. No need to reload the app on every change.
Component library: it doesn’t matter if it’s a blank state or an edge case, you can bookmark each component state. The component library includes will organise everything you do.
Open platform: it’s not used just for developing and testing UI components but it can also be used for snapshot and visual regression testing, as well as custom integrations.
Maintainability: with reusable components, you can not only create awesome interfaces but also maintain the quality at scale.
6. Belle
What is it?
Belle uses a set of configurable React components with great UX.
With Belle, you can never be in doubt of the overall experience of your components. It provides you a set of commonly used React components like Toggle, ComboBox, Rating, TextInput, Button, Card, Select, etc.
Features:
Versatile and customisable: every component is optimised efficiently to work on both mobile and desktop devices.
Component library: it doesn’t matter if it’s a blank state or an edge case, you can bookmark each component state. The component library includes will organise everything you do.
Open platform: it’s not used just for developing and testing UI components but it can also be used for snapshot and visual regression testing, as well as custom integrations.
Maintainability: with reusable components, you can not only create awesome interfaces but also maintain the quality at scale.
7. React 360
What is it?
React 360 is a framework for the creation of interactive 360 experiences that run in your web browser.
And yes, the same company that builds React is responsible for its VR version i.e Facebook. It uses three.js to facilitate lower-level WebVR and WebGL APIs to create a VR experience on the browser.
Features:
Cross-platform development: you can create VR experiences to run on desktops, mobiles, and the web without much change in different platforms.
3D media: it has environment features that handle all the immersive media assets and configurations. That means you as a 360 developer will have precise control.
Enhanced performance: the overall architecture is designed.
Surfaces by React 360: this allows you to integrate UI panels into your apps by creating 2D interfaces that embed on 3D spaces.
Bonus Tools!
Apart from the above 7 tools, we also got you three more! Let’s take a very quick look at them:
Rekit: it’s a toolkit to build scalable web applications with React, Redux, and React-router. It’s an all-in-one solution for creating modern React apps.
React Testing Library: it is a lightweight solution for testing React components. It provides utility functions on top of react-dom and react-dom/test-utils, in a way that encourages better testing practices.
Plasmic: it’s an all-in-one tool to visually build pages and components, integrate them to your React code and then set/push them to production.
AdminMart: the best free and premium admin dashboard react template you need.
WrapPixel: it’s a one-stop solution for your react template needs. It provides both free and premium versions for backend interfaces.
Conclusion
That was it! We hope these tools will help you in your upcoming React projects. Keep on exploring the vast ecosystem React provides by keeping a tab on their official website.
Latest comments (1)
Valtio is something I recommend it is the best state manager in the world for me.