Preface

Any given technology is only as good as the tooling that supports it. React is no exception. Although React is just a library from creating user interfaces, the ecosystem that has sprung up around it means that a typical React project has many moving parts. Without the appropriate tooling, you end up spending a lot of time manually performing tasks that would be better off automated by a tool.

React tools come in many forms. Some have been around for a while, others are brand new. Some are found in the browser, others are strictly command line. There are a lot of tools that React developers can use—I've tried to focus on the most powerful tools that have had a direct impact on projects that I've worked on.

Each chapter of this book focuses one React tool. It starts with basic development tools, moves into tools that aid with perfecting your React component design, and finishes with tools for deploying React applications in production.

Who this book is for

This book is intended for React developers who are constantly on the lookout for better tools and techniques to up their game. While React experience isn't a strict requirement for reading this book, you'll get the most value if you understand some of the basics of React beforehand.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Creating a Personalized React Development Ecosystem, introduces the motivations for tooling in React projects.

Chapter 2, Efficiently Bootstrapping React Applications with Create React App, gets you up and running with create-react-app.

Chapter 3, Development Mode and Mastering Hot Reloading, shows you how to develop your React application using a development server and hot module reloading.

Chapter 4, Optimizing Test-Driven React Development, teaches you how to incorporate Jest unit testing into your project.

Chapter 5, Streamlining Development and Refactoring with Type-Safe React Components, introduces type-safety with React components using Flow.

Chapter 6, Enforcing Code Quality to Improve Maintainability, gets you started with ESLint and Prettier—tools for enhancing the quality of your code.

Chapter 7, Isolating Components with Storybook, shows you have to isolate component development from the rest of your application using Storybook.

Chapter 8, Debugging Components in the Browser, goes into depth on the React Development Tools browser plugin to assist with React component debugging.

Chapter 9, Instrumenting Application State with Redux, introduces the Redux DevTools browser plugin, providing you with a clear picture of your application state.

Chapter 10, Building and Deploying Static React Sites with Gatsby, teaches you how to create static websites using Gatsby and React components.

Chapter 11, Building and Deploying React Applications with Docker Containers, shows you how to deploy production-ready React applications to containers.

 

To get the most out of this book

• Learn the basics of React.
• If you're already using React in your project, identify missing tools.

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Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "Next, let's look at the package.json file that was created by Create React App."

A block of code is set as follows:

import React from 'react'; 
 
const Heading = ({ children }) => ( 
  <h1>{children}</h1> 
); 
 
export default Heading;

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

import React from 'react'; 
 
const Heading = ({ children }) => ( 
  <h1>{children}</h1> 
); 
 
export default Heading;

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

$ npm install -g create-react-app

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "Once you click on the Add extension button, the extension is marked as installed."

Note

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Note

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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