React Consulting

• React is a Web 2.0 SPA (single-page app framework) open sourced by Facebook.
• React offers high performance, modularity, speed of development, code-reuse, cross-platform support, reduced complexity and a great ecosystem.
• Cazton teams help Fortune 500, large and mid-size companies with React development, consulting, recruiting services and hands-on training services.
• Our experts can help you with performance improvement, code quality, code coverage, CI/CD and implementing React and JavaScript best practices.

React is a Javascript library, developed and maintained by Facebook. This frontend library is easily accessible since it is open-source and is used for building user interfaces. It is highly popular for web development today and has reached new heights in the job market with over 28% mentions in job openings as of June 2018. The common thing between Facebook, Instagram, PayPal, Uber, Netflix, Whatsapp is that they are all built using React!

Many times developers need to rewrite and change code when adding new components or features. React, with its component-based nature, makes this easy and encourages code reusability and hence makes websites much more maintainable and extensible. At Cazton, our team of JavaScript experts are well-versed with a wide variety of JavaScript frameworks including React and have years hands on experience building tools, libraries, applications using various JavaScript frameworks.

Our team of React Consultants can help you develop, test and deploy React applications. In a team led by Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals and Google Developer Experts, we provide excellent training programs on React, covering an extensive range of topics from beginner to advanced level including React, Redux and React Native. Taken by experts, we provide customised training as per needs of your organisation and team.

What is React?

React was developed by Facebook to manage Facebook Ads more efficiently and deal with a large number of updates. Despite the availability of technologies such as AngularJS, it became necessary to develop a new one as the developers at that time were already struggling with large volumes of code.

The Facebook developer team realised that DOM is slow to work with so they developed React which implements a concept of Virtual DOM wherein DOM elements are represented as a tree in Javascript. Since Javascript is very fast, this virtual representation of the DOM model was a feasible choice to speed things up.

React is declarative, component-based and open-source. With minimal coding, developers can easily program more efficiently in React. In the Model-View-Controller model, React corresponds to the "View", so it is primarily concerned with displaying the UI features instead of specifying the logic that runs behind it. Other than being developer friendly there are many other benefits of using React.

Advantages of using React

• Speed and Efficiency: React was built because it was becoming expensive to continually update pages. Naturally, speed and efficiency are its highlight features. For every new feature, only the relevant part gets loaded, unlike the earlier model of reloading the entire page. We can design a rich UI experience for the user, with greater ease.
• Component Based Design: One of the highlights of the development of React was that it was component based. Instead of working on an application or a project as a whole, one can work on individual components as functions and use them to build complex UI designs. This makes React code highly reusable, and definitely easier to work with. Any design problem can be broken down into components and users can work individually on them.
• Updates in React: Components in React are like functions - having "properties" and "state". The state stores the changes made to the page in one place. With React you no longer face the problem of regenerating HTML views. React allows us to specify only the changes that need to take place on a particular page instead of having to go into the nitty-gritty of "how" it happens. React, as its name suggests, updates the DOM in reaction to any changes made.
• Virtual DOM: The motivation behind developing React were slow methods of updating already existent HTML. React creates a tree representation of the DOM in its memory and calls it the Virtual DOM. When state of any component changes, React evaluates the difference between both the trees, and instead of the whole page, only those parts are re-rendered and updated that actually got changed. Virtual DOM is a tree representation of the DOM. This enhances performance and makes for a prompt interaction with the user and rich, engaging application development, which is the ultimate aim of any UI/UX developer.
• Declarative: Working with React means concerning yourself with describing or declaring how you want the UI interface to be. React handles this description and translates our it into the actual frontend design, without requiring us to describe steps to achieve it. It uses Javascript to render the HTML which also helps it implement the Virtual DOM discussed above. Writing views declaratively also make them easier to debug.
• Independent of Stack: React is a Javascript library and not a complete framework, so it does not depend upon the opted technological stack. It does not claim to provide a complete solution and so doesn't assume any surrounding technology, in fact, other libraries, frameworks and technologies are often used in conjunction with it. Organisations, developers and users can effectively work on the same code irrespective of the stack.
• Learning Curve: In comparison to other technologies emerging in the market, React has a steep learning curve. Familiarity with Javascript and HTML is enough to get you started. Good practices may take some time to grasp but it offers very less abstractions.
• JSX: It is an extension of the Javascript syntax which allows us to seamlessly use HTML inside of our Javascript and we can see real time changes on the UI made by a new feature.
• Webpack: As Javascript gains popularity and complex websites are designed using it, we are faced with complicated file dependency trees. Bundling allows us to group separate files to decrease the number of HTTP requests sent to load a webpage. Webpack is a module bundler and task runner, popularised by its use with React and Hot Module Replacement. It bundles multiple modules so that the browser understands it better. It uses a dependency graph to do this and additionally provides an option to split files from within the bundle created by it.

React V/S React Native

For the longest time Native App Development spelt low efficiency, slow loading , more deployment time and less productivity for developers. React-Native comes with a promise of high speed, responsiveness and greater efficiency, just like React.

React Native is a framework, that allows us to build Mobile applications - both iOS and Android. The fundamentals of mobile application building remain the same, however instead of Swift or Java we use React and Javascript. Often called a "consequence of React", React Native implements React as a base abstraction.

The basic difference between React and React Native is that the former is just a Javascript library to create interactive UIs while the latter is an entire framework implementing it.

• Use case and Setup: React is used to design web applications - creating a hierarchy if UI components, while React Native is used to make cross-origin mobile applications.
• Languages, Libraries, Components: React Native comes with Native modules and Native Components, while with React, bundles need to be installed as per requirement. React is further based and written in JSX (Javascript XML) and uses HTML to render through Javascript directly. React Native doesn't use HTML but keeping the principle of the above intact, it uses alternative components. Since the code doesn't use HTML or even CSS while rendering, none of the React libraries come in handy. We can use Flexbox, Animated API, Navigator and other components provided by it.
• Platform-Dependence: React may be used anywhere irrespective of the Technology stack. When working with React-Native we can have a universal logical design of the application that may be used in both iOS and Android. To create separate user experiences, the code for the UI/UX for both can be written separately. To run the code, we need XCode and Android Studio respectively.
• Handling Reloading: React uses the Virtual DOM concept to load only relevant parts of the page. On the other hand, to render the app components, React Native uses Native APIs. "Hot Reloading" in React-Native serves a purpose similar to Virtual DOM, wherein we can run latest code and at the same time retain current application state.
• Learning Curve: As discussed before, the learning curve with React is fairly steep as one only needs working knowledge of HTML and Javascript. While, the transition from React to React-Native is arguably easy - you need to additionally acquire knowledge of the syntax, platform APIs and React Native components.

How can Cazton help you with React Consulting?

React has made it easy to build efficient and effective UI designs. By using React, we can enhance performance, improve click-rates, We can help you sail through the experience of learning and training in React with our enthusiastic team of experts. One of the principle ideas behind developing React was enabling developers to write good code. At Cazton, we never compromise on writing "good code"- making it minimal, readable, maintainable, scalable and efficient. We can help you create performance driven, superior-featured beautiful applications as customer satisfaction and effective user interaction and experience lie at the core of our values.