In this section, we will create a simple React-based project and will learn how this library works and what its core concepts are.
Let's create an empty project folder and initialize NPM:
$ mkdir learn-react
$ cd learn-react
$ npm init
$ npm install react react-dom --save
The quickest way to get started with React is to use the react-scripts package:
$ npm install react-scripts --save-dev
Now, let's add a start script to package.json:
{
"scripts": {
"start": "react-scripts start"
}
}
NPM auto-binds CLI scripts installed in the node_modules/.bin directory along with the packages, so we can use them in package.json scripts directly.
The smallest possible setup for a React app is the following: we need a landing HTML page and one script with the app.
Let's start with the bedrock HTML:
<!--public/index.html-->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Learn React</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="app"></div>
</body>
</html>
And here is the main JS file:
//src/index.js:
import React from "react";
import {render} from "react-dom";
render(
<h1>It works!</h1>,
document.getElementById('app')
);
This is it. Now, we can run the command to start the development server:
$ npm start
It will open port 3000 on the localhost. Open the URL http://localhost:3000 in your browser; the index.js script will be run and the render function will render an HTML page with "It works!" in it.
https://reactjs.org/docs/introducing-jsx.html. This chapter will only briefly cover the main aspects that are essential for Next.js apps.
The simplest React component is just a function that takes props as an argument and returns JSX:
const Cmp = ({children, ...props}) => (<div {...props}>{children}</div>);
JSX is HTML with the ability to insert and execute JS in it. In this example, we inject variables into a tag as properties and as content.
A more complicated component may have state:
class Cmp extends React.Component {
state = {value: 'init'};
onClick = (event) => { this.setState({value: 'clicked'}); };
render() {
return (
<button onClick={this.onClick}>{this.state.value}</button>
);
}
}
Components may have static properties:
class Cmp extends React.Component {
static foo = 'foo';
}
or
Cmp.foo = 'foo';
These static properties are often used to describe some meta-information about the components:
import PropTypes from "prop-types";
Cmp.propTypes = {
propName: PropTypes.string
};
Next.js utilizes static properties heavily and we will show you how later.
The simplest way to achieve code splitting in a React application is to store the entire progressively-loaded component in the state:
class Cmp extends React.Component {
state = {Sub: null};
onClick = async (event) => {
const Sub = (await import('./path/to/Sub.js')).default;
this.setState({Sub});
};
render() {
const {Sub} = this.state;
return (
<div>
<button onClick={this.onClick}>Load</button>
<Sub/>
</div>
);
}
}
Another way to achieve code splitting is to use the React Router.
All React components have life cycle hooks that can be utilized, for example, to load the data from a remote server:
class Cmp extends React.Component {
state = {data: null};
async componentWillMount() {
const data = await (await fetch('https://example.com')).json();
this.setState({data});
}
render() {
const {data} = this.state;
return (
<pre>
{JSON.stringify(data)}
</pre>
);
}
}
The React API is of course much bigger than what was covered here, so please refer to the official documentation for more info. The things mentioned here are absolutely essential for Next.js, which is why we mentioned them.
