Book Image

React Key Concepts

By : Maximilian Schwarzmüller
Book Image

React Key Concepts

By: Maximilian Schwarzmüller

Overview of this book

As the most popular JavaScript library for building modern, interactive user interfaces, React is an in-demand framework that’ll bring real value to your career or next project. But like any technology, learning React can be tricky, and finding the right teacher can make things a whole lot easier. Maximilian Schwarzmüller is a bestselling instructor who has helped over two million students worldwide learn how to code, and his latest React video course (React — The Complete Guide) has over six hundred thousand students on Udemy. Max has written this quick-start reference to help you get to grips with the world of React programming. Simple explanations, relevant examples, and a clear, concise approach make this fast-paced guide the ideal resource for busy developers. This book distills the core concepts of React and draws together its key features with neat summaries, thus perfectly complementing other in-depth teaching resources. So, whether you've just finished Max’s React video course and are looking for a handy reference tool, or you've been using a variety of other learning materials and now need a single study guide to bring everything together, this is the ideal companion to support you through your next React projects. Plus, it's fully up to date for React 18, so you can be sure you’re ready to go with the latest version.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)

Refs versus State

Since refs can be used to get quick and easy access to DOM elements, the question that might come up is whether you should always use refs instead of state.

The clear answer to this question is "no".

Refs can be a very good alternative in use cases like the one shown above, when you need read access to an element. This is very often the case when dealing with user input. In general, refs can replace state if you're just accessing some value to read it when some function (a form submit handler function, for example) is executed. As soon as you need to change values and those changes must be reflected in the UI (for example, by rendering some conditional content), refs are out of the game.

In the example above, if, besides getting the entered value, you'd also like to reset (i.e., clear) the email input after the form was submitted, you should use state again. While you could reset the input with the help of a ref, you should not do that...