A Brief History of Tools Used in JavaScript Development
React was a hot new thing in web development that helped create websites more efficiently. These are sometimes called react-based developer tools, but these labels can be misleading because there is no official specification for what react-based means.
In general, this term is used to describe frameworks and libraries that use React as the basis of their architecture or design. Examples include Relay and Apollo from Facebook, Glimmer from the EmberJS team at Yahoo!, and Vue.js by Evan You who is an ex-Google engineer.
Many people often refer to these types of tools as JavaScript frameworks, but they aren’t really all that different from the original JavaScript framework: AngularJS web development. Some of the most popular examples of React-based developer tools are also some of the most popular frontend frameworks today.
For example, Vue.js is one such tool that uses reactive programming principles and declarative style building for creating interactive interfaces; it has been seen as an easier alternative to Angular 2+ apps and has since exploded in popularity.
React Developer Tools, or RDT is an extension of Chrome Developer Tools that brings additional functionality to your React development workflow. It helps you make use of the most popular features of React and its related tools, such as Hot Module Replacement (HMR), Redux, Webpack, and other utility libraries built around React like Material UI, Formik, etc. With RDT you can view the component hierarchy of your application in real-time, make changes to components without reloading the page, and connect to Redux DevTools to inspect your state tree and actions.
Redux
The Redux library is used for managing the state of JavaScript applications. As a part of this, it provides a UI that communicates with the store through actions and reducers which can update parts of the UI in response to various changes. It was created by Dan Abramov and Andrew Clark. React-Redux: A set of React bindings for Redux that provides simple binding methods for connecting components to the store using an API modeled after React’s built-in setState() method.
Hot Module Replacement (HMR)
HMR is a developer tool that updates modules in your application without needing to reload. It caches the previous version of your component so when you update it the changes persist for the next time. There are three ways to use this with React: react-hot-loader, react-transform, and glamorous.
It’s important to note that there is no universal standard library for HMR. You can find many different libraries like webpack, browserify, rollup, or babel which all provide different setups depending on what framework you’re using. Make sure to research what will work best for your needs.
React Styleguidist
Developers use Styleguidist to create powerful React UI libraries with zero build configuration. It’s used by companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Airbnb. Developers can either import a library or start from scratch with their own code snippets.
The IDE is updated in real-time as the code changes so developers don’t have to worry about saving their work constantly. There is also a built-in option for generating documentation. Other features include CSS autocompletion, multi-cursor support, and live previewing of your project on different screen sizes. What makes it especially useful is that it doesn’t require any type of setup to get started.
React Storyteller
It’s the perfect tool for visualizing a React application in one place. But with this powerful feature comes some drawbacks. You’ll need to be comfortable with your command line, and you’ll need to work offline as it may not properly work in an online environment like GitHub or Travis CI. One of the most powerful features of Storyteller is its ability to visualize dependencies.
The storyteller will show which components rely on other components by highlighting them. You can also see if there are any bugs or errors within the app that would otherwise go unnoticed without Storyteller.
React Context
The React Context API provides a way to pass data between multiple components without having them all depend on each other. It also gives you a way to store data that belongs in the application and pass it between components, such as stateful information. As an example, if you have a toggle button for turning something on or off in your app, this is the perfect place to store this data using context.
Next time you need to change what is being turned on or off (or any property), just update the value of this property and all of your components will instantly reflect this change.
A parent component may have one or more child components that rely on context for their own functions to work properly. If the parent component’s context changes, then all its children will automatically re-render with the new values.
The most common way to access React Context is through the use of getChildContext() which returns a read-only object containing information about this node’s ancestors and descendants up to but not including root nodes.
Author BIO
Ankur Awasthi is Senior Front-End Developer and passionate writer at Devstringx a top ReactJS web development company in India. He has solid command of the front-end technologies like Angular, React, VueJs, etc. With the experience of more than 05 years, he has mentored several leaders in the industry. He loves writing about the latest technologies, venture bubbles, and market trends.
