What This Book Covers

Chapter 1, React – What and Why, will re-introduce you to React.js. Assuming that React.js is not brand-new to you, this chapter will clarify which problems React solves, which alternatives exist, how React generally works, and how React projects may be created.

Chapter 2, Understanding React Components and JSX, will explain the general structure of a React app (a tree of components) and how components are created and used in React apps.

Chapter 3, Components and Props, will ensure that you are able to build reusable components by using a key concept called “props”.

Chapter 4, Working with Events and State, will cover how to work with state in React components, which different options exist (single state vs multiple state slices) and how state changes can be performed and used for UI updates.

Chapter 5, Rendering Lists and Conditional Content, will explain how React apps can render lists of content (e.g., lists of user posts) and conditional content (e.g., alert if incorrect values are entered into an input field).

Chapter 6, Styling React Apps, will clarify how React components can be styled and how styles can be applied dynamically or conditionally, touching on popular styling solutions like vanilla CSS, Tailwind CSS, styled components, and CSS modules for scoped styles.

Chapter 7, Portals and Refs, will explain how direct DOM access and manipulation is facilitated via the “refs” feature that is built-into React. In addition, you will learn how Portals may be used to optimize the rendered DOM element structure.

Chapter 8, Handling Side Effects, will discuss the useEffect hook, explaining how it works, how it can be configured for different use cases and scenarios, and how side effects can be handled optimally with this React hook.

Chapter 9, Handling User Input & Forms with Form Actions, will explore how React simplifies the process of handling forms by allowing you to define client-side form actions that are triggered upon submission.

Chapter 10, Behind the Scenes of React and Optimization Opportunities, will take a look behind the scenes of React and dive into core topics like the virtual DOM, state update batching and key optimization techniques that help you avoid unnecessary re-render cycles (and thus improve performance).

Chapter 11, Working with Complex State, will explain how the advanced React hook useReducer works, when and why you might want to use it and how it, can be used in React components to manage more complex component state with it. In addition, React’s Context API will be explored and discussed in depth, allowing you to manage app-wide state with ease.

Chapter 12, Building Custom React Hooks, will build up on the previous chapters and explore how you can build your own, custom React hooks and what the advantage of doing so is.

Chapter 13, Multipage Apps with React Router, will explain what React Router is and how this extra library can be used to build multipage experiences in a React single-page-application.

Chapter 14, Managing Data with React Router, will dive deeper into React Router and explore how this package can also help with fetching and managing data.

Chapter 15, Server-side Rendering & Building Fullstack Apps with Next.js, will help you understand the concept of server-side rendering (SSR) and help you use your React knowledge with the popular Next.js framework to build applications that span across both the front and backend.

Chapter 16, React Server Components & Server Actions, will build upon the idea of building fullstack React apps and explain how you may render components and handle form submissions on the server side.

Chapter 17, Understanding React Suspense & The use() Hook, will explain how React helps you provide better user experiences by showing fallback content while data is being fetched.

Chapter 18, Next Steps and Further Resources, will cover the core and extended React ecosystem and which resources may be helpful for next steps.

This book also comes with the following downloadable supplementary content:

• A cheatsheet accompanying every chapter of the book
• A video in which author Maximilian gives you his recommendations for next steps after finishing this book
• A video in which author Maximilian shares his thoughts about the future of React

Instructions for claiming this content are available at the end of the Preface.