Learning ReactA hands-on guide to building web applications using React and Redux As far as new web frameworks and libraries go, React is quite the runaway success. It not only deals with the most common problems developers face when building complex apps, it throws in a few additional tricks that make building the visuals for such apps much, much easier.
What React isn’t, though, is beginner-friendly and approachable. Until now. In Learning React, author Kirupa Chinnathambi brings his fresh, clear, and very personable writing style to help web developers new to React understand its fundamentals and how to use it to build really performant (and awesome) apps.
The only book on the market that helps you get your first React app up and running in just minutes, Learning Reactis chock-full of colorful illustrations to help you visualize difficult concepts and practical step-by-step examples to show you how to apply what you learn.
Build your first React app Create components to define parts of your UI Combine components into other components to build more complex UIs Use JSX to specify visuals without writing full-fledged JavaScript Deal with maintaining state Work with React’s way of styling content Make sense of the mysterious component lifecycle Build multi-page apps using routing and views Optimize your React workflow using tools such as Node, Babel, webpack, and others Use Redux to make managing your app data and state easy
Contents at a Glance 1 Introducing React
2 Building Your First React App
3 Components in React
4 Styling in React
5 Creating Complex Components
6 Transferring Properties
7 Meet JSX... Again!
8 Dealing with State in React
9 Going from Data to UI in React
10 Events in React
11 The Component Lifecycle
12 Accessing DOM Elements in React
13 Setting Up Your React Dev Environment
14 Working with External Data in React
15 Building an Awesome Todo List App in React
16 Creating a Sliding Menu in React
17 Avoiding Unnecessary Renders in React
18 Creating a Single-Page App in React Using React Router
As a backend programmer trying to rekindle an ambition to become a full-stack developer, Learning React: A Hands-On Guide to Building Web Applications Using React and Redux was a good introduction to React, arguable the hottest frontend JavaScript framework. I have some frontend experience back in the day when jQuery was the coolest thing but the assumption of this book is that you have a basic understanding of how to code in JavaScript. I am probably not the target audience but I wanted some guidepost since the world of frontend frameworks seems a bit crazy in how fast it changes and the complexity that it has accumulated since the single-page app has become the standard.
The book has 20 chapters, each introducing a new concept and a relevant, self-contained example code. By the end of the book, you should be able to write a very simple app and have a good foundation on which to build practical techniques to actually code something useful. I think the issue is that the book is probably too elementary, and the author has a tendency to spend spaces on fuffs in an apparent attempt to make the content accessible, only to sound patronizing. I ended up skipping about half the content in each chapter since they don't really add much to my understanding of the framework. But the overall structure is decent and does lay the proper groundwork for further coding in React.
Since the book itself does not introduce quite enough stuff to actually produce useful work, it would be nice if the author presents recommended resources for further learning, perhaps the API usage guides or cookbook-style books. After finishing, I am having to research what to go for next in order to polish my newly acquired skill.
Learning React: A Hands-on Guide to Building Web Applications Using React and Redux, is a good book for React newbies, like me! Redux, on the other hand, not so much as that is only briefly discussed at the end of the book.
The writing style is light and easy with a few too many attempts at humor; seriously, there were more misses than hits in that regard. There are also a couple of mistakes in the code examples, which was both frustrating and then rewarding as I got to test my knowledge and fix the bugs. This, however, was still unacceptable for a professional book that’s supposed to teach you a new subject.
Overall, I know more about React now than I did before. I believe I got a good general overview and believe I can move on to more advanced aspects of this JavaScript library.
So, this might be a good introduction for some readers, but overall it's a very light, very superficial and now unfortunately out-of-date introduction. It's an easy read, so if you want a quick overview of React, it might be a good choice. But it would be hard for me to genuinely recommend it. One thing I did like about it is that the author uses babel-standalone for about half the book to make it easy to try out React without a lot of infrastructure, which is a really nice approach. That's something I'll be borrowing and using elsewhere.
The book was okay. It was a nice accessible introduction to React. You can finish it in a few settings.
The react router chapter was a little outdated. Other than that the book is pretty much straight forward and should be a good to guide for anyone who wants to get his/her hands dirty with React development.
Great way to get an introduction to React concepts. The format and speed of information was very approachable, but the content (mostly class based) is starting to become outdated with current web dev practices/preferences moving more toward functions.