7 Best Practices for ReactJS Development in 2024

Modern web development has made ReactJS an essential tool, enabling developers to create dynamic and interactive user interfaces with ease. ReactJS development best practices change along with technology. Maintaining technological leadership will necessitate implementing fresh approaches and plans to guarantee scalable, maintainable, and efficient code. In 2024, the following seven best practices should be adhered to when developing ReactJS:

1. Embracing Component-Driven Development

Among ReactJS best practices, component-driven programming is still at the forefront. The goal is to simplify complicated UIs into reusable parts that support code reusability and outline functionality. Adopting component-driven development promotes teamwork, improves code maintainability, and expedites the development process.

Example:

const Button = ({ onClick, label }) => (
  <button onClick={onClick}>{label}</button>
);

const App = () => (
  <div>
    <Button onClick={() => alert('Button clicked!')} label="Click Me" />
    <Button onClick={() => alert('Another button clicked!')} label="Another Click" />
  </div>
);

2. Leveraging React Hooks for State Management

React Hooks' broad adoption has made handling state in functional components easier to understand and implement. Effective state management requires utilizing React Hooks like useEffect and useState. Developers can avoid the drawbacks of class-based components and write cleaner, more legible code by adopting Hooks.

Example:

import React, { useState, useEffect } from 'react';

const Counter = () => {
  const [count, setCount] = useState(0);

  useEffect(() => {
    document.title = `Count: ${count}`;
  }, [count]);

  return (
    <div>
      <p>You clicked {count} times</p>
      <button onClick={() => setCount(count + 1)}>Click me</button>
    </div>
  );
};

3. Implementing Performance Optimization Techniques

Performance optimization of ReactJS applications is critical in this dynamic environment. By using methods like code splitting, memoization, and lazy loading, bundle sizes can be decreased, render times can be decreased, and user experience can be improved overall. React developers continue to place a high priority on performance optimization to maintain the responsiveness and scalability of their applications despite growing complexity.

Example:

import React, { useState, useMemo } from 'react';

const ExpensiveCalculationComponent = ({ num }) => {
  const computeExpensiveValue = (num) => {
    // Simulate a heavy computation
    console.log('Computing...');
    return num * 2;
  };

  const memoizedValue = useMemo(() => computeExpensiveValue(num), [num]);

  return <div>Computed Value: {memoizedValue}</div>;
};

4. Embracing Server-Side Rendering (SSR) and Static Site Generation (SSG)

Static site generation (SSG) and server-side rendering (SSR) have become more popular in ReactJS development due to the growing demands of search engines and user expectations regarding quickly loaded web pages. With frameworks like Next.js, developers can embrace SSR and SSG approaches and produce lightning-fast online experiences without sacrificing the adaptability and interaction of React components.

Example:

// pages/index.js with Next.js
import React from 'react';

const Home = ({ data }) => (
  <div>
    <h1>Welcome to Next.js!</h1>
    <p>Data fetched from server: {data}</p>
  </div>
);

export async function getServerSideProps() {
  // Fetch data from an API
  const res = await fetch('https://api.example.com/data');
  const data = await res.json();

  return { props: { data } };
}

export default Home;

5. Adopting TypeScript for Type Safety

TypeScript continues to gain traction as the preferred language for building robust and scalable web applications. Developers can benefit from greater code maintainability, improved tooling support, and type safety when they use TypeScript in ReactJS applications. They may work together more productively in teams, identify issues early, and refactor code with confidence by utilizing TypeScript's static typing features.

Example:

import React from 'react';

type GreetingProps = {
  name: string;
};

const Greeting: React.FC<GreetingProps> = ({ name }) => <h1>Hello, {name}!</h1>;

export default Greeting;

6. Implementing Accessibility Practices

Accessibility and inclusive design are becoming required components of contemporary online development, not optional features. By using accessibility practices, ReactJS projects may guarantee that their applications meet industry standards and laws and are usable by people with disabilities. Finding and fixing accessibility problems early in the development process is made easier by integrating tools like React Accessibility Scanner and carrying out manual audits.

Example:

const AccessibleButton = ({ onClick, label }) => (
  <button onClick={onClick}>
    {label}
  </button>
);

const App = () => (
  <div>
    <AccessibleButton onClick={() => alert('Button clicked!')} label="Click Me" />
  </div>
);

7. Embracing Continuous Integration and Deployment (CI/CD)

Delivering high-quality ReactJS apps requires streamlining the development workflow with CI/CD pipelines. Build, test, and deployment procedures may all be automated to help teams work more efficiently, find errors earlier, and confidently push updates to production. Adopting CI/CD processes increases customer satisfaction and commercial value by promoting a culture of creativity, teamwork, and quick iteration.

Example:

# .github/workflows/ci.yml for GitHub Actions
name: CI

on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ main ]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Set up Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v2
        with:
          node-version: '20'
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm ci
      - name: Run tests
        run: npm test
      - name: Build project
        run: npm run build

In Closing

ReactJS development is characterized by a relentless pursuit of efficiency, scalability, and user-centricity. Through the adoption of contemporary tools and practices, performance optimization strategies, and React Hooks, developers may create innovative web apps. ReactJS is at the forefront of web development in 2024 and beyond, emphasizing innovation and teamwork.

Comments

[rbuzatto]

This accessibility example is actually an example where you shouldn't be using aria-label. Button would be already be announced correctly, there's no reason to add aria-label here. If you had an icon instead as children then providing aria-label would be crucial for accessibility.

[Vishal Yadav]

Yeah, Updated.

[Tarun Duggempudi]

Looks like simple yet effective article to keep handy.

I like how the author address basic importance of component driven approach with state management hooks and ends with CI/CD yml automation process along with SSG, SSR concepts.

🍻

[Vishal Yadav]

Thanks

[Tobias Lundin]

In CI you would use "npm ci" and not "npm install" and I'd go for node LTS rather than node 14 that is old and deprecated by many packages out there already 😉

[Vishal Yadav]

Done!

[Usman]

Could you plz provide Related docs for learning

[Eric Bishard]

But it's just a list of projects that have nothing in it, well maybe there are a few I didn't link to the free projects with repo links, but this route of resource and repository would be a nightmare to maintain. Imagine having all 500 of those projects created and the time it would take to maintain and update over time when there's plenty of project examples out there and by searching Google or asking AI, you can get multiple examples of each. Why ask us to give it a star in a completely unrelated comment in this man's blog post. You didn't even acknowledge this articles existence. Just straight into asking others to check out your thing. How many comments like this one were copy pasted into other dev.to articles. It's not a good way at all to get people to contribute or like you or your project. You didn't even try to have a conversation here. Just an ad for your incomplete project.

[Eric Bishard]

The only issue I have with this article is the use of 2024 in the title. I don't think there is anything new for 2024 here. What I would have titled the article instead is: "Fundamental Best Practices all React Developers Should Know".

However, this is not a criticism for anything other than the title being one that I think was created to increases the likelihood that more JavaScript developers would click on it.

The idea of highlighting these practices in what I think are simple and easy to understand. I'm a big proponent of breaking down somewhat complex ideas into their most practical, basic implementation using code most people will understand.

That's the reason I clicked on and bookmarked this page.

[Edward Jazzhands]

People often just stick the year on an article to make it easy to see its up to date information. Honestly that's why I clicked it. I get what you mean that it feels kind of clickbaity. But hey, at the end of the day, it works...