React Best Practices

Update 11/6/20: I have taken on a personal project with React and React Native. I will soon be updating this repo with new techniques and updated opinions from the internet on what best practices are out there.

Next update will include:
React Native
RxJS
SHARED Redux Model as independent repo (used in both React and React Native on the same project)
...latest and greatest in React and React Native

Thank you for all the stars! I will do my best to make this repo live up to its title.

Architecture

Patterns

Flux Pattern (uni-directional)
https://code-cartoons.com/a-cartoon-guide-to-flux-6157355ab207

Functional Paradigm

Functional Programming

• Immutability
  • No side-effects
  • Predictable data
• Functional methods
  • map/filter/reduce
    • w3Schools array functions
• Higher Order Components/Functions
  • Reusability and Composition

Pure Components

• fn(state, props) == UI
• Local state suggestions from: https://medium.com/@robftw/characteristics-of-an-ideal-react-architecture-883b9b92be0b
  • No local state other than:
    • Animation/triggering of CSS Classes
    • UI control that doesn't involve business logic or dependent on other components
    • Extremely trivial UI related variables that won't cause side effects
    • Standalone libraries

Routing

React Router
https://github.com/ReactTraining/react-router

Guide:
https://reacttraining.com/react-router/web/guides/quick-start

State Management

Redux
https://redux.js.org/

Redux DevTools
Chrome Extension

This is a must have for Redux development.

Great article if you want to hone your skills:
https://codeburst.io/redux-devtools-for-dummies-74566c597d7

Middleware

Redux Thunk
https://github.com/reduxjs/redux-thunk

"Thunks are the recommended middleware for basic Redux side effects logic, including complex synchronous logic that needs access to the store, and simple async logic like AJAX requests."

Redux-Sagas
https://github.com/redux-saga/redux-saga

Similar concept to thunk using Middleware to control side-effects in a React-Redux application, but with the added bonus of using ES6 Generators to control async flow and increase readability.

More on Generators

State Structure

Normalized data structures by Id (Relational Table Model)

{
  entities: {
    Post: {
      itemById: {
        "post1" : {
          id: "post1"
          author: "author1"
          body: "..."
          comments: ["comment1", "comment2"]
        },
        "post2" : {
          id: "post2"
          author: "author2"
          body: "..."
          comments: ["comment3", "comment4", "comment5"]
        },
      },
      items: ["post1", "post2"],
      meta: {},
    },
    User: {
      itemsById: {
        "user1": {
          username: "user1",
          name: "User 1",
        },
        "user2": {
          username: "user2",
          name: "User 2",
        },
        "user3": {
          username: "user3",
          name: "User 3",
        },
      },
      items: ["user1", "user2", "user3"],
      meta: {},
    },
    Comment: {
      itemsById: {
          "comment1": {
            userId: "user1",
            postId: "post1",
            body: { ... },
          },
          "comment2": {
            userId: "user2",
            postId: "post2",
            body: { ... },
          },
          "comment3": {
            userId: "user3",
            postId: "post3",
            body: { ... },
          },
          "comment4": {
            userId: "user4",
            postId: "post4",
            body: { ... },
          },
          "comment5": {
            userId: "user5",
            postId: "post5",
            body: { ... },
          },
        },
        items: ["comment1", "comment2", "comment3", "comment4", "comment5"],
        meta: {}
    },
  },
  
  
  simpleDomainData1: {...},
  simpleDomainData2: {...},
}

Removes the deeply nested structures as your state grows in size and keeps components from re-rendering accidentally.

Folder Structure

.
├── /android/
├── /ios/
|
├── /assets
│   ├── /fonts/
│   ├── /images/
│   ├── /videos/
|
├── /app or /src
│   ├── /ducks/  // See "Ducks"
│   ├── /scenes/
│   |   ├── /App
│   |   |   ├── /_/
│   |   |   ├── /App.js
│   |   |   └── /index.js
|   |   ├── /MyScene/
|   |   |   ├── /__tests__/
|   |   |   ├── /_
|   |   |   |   ├── /MySubcomponent
|   |   |   |       ├── /__tests__/
|   |   |   |       ├── /MySubcomponent.js
│   |   |   |       └── /index.js
│   |   |   ├── /MyScene.js
│   |   |   └── /index.js
│   ├── /shared/
|   |   ├── /SharedAppSpecificComponent
|   |   |   ├── /__tests__/
|   |   |   ├── /SharedAppSpecificComponent.js
|   |   |   └── /index.js
│   |   └── /types.js
|   ├── /store/ // configureStore.js + middleware
|   └── /utils/ // helper functions, etc.
|
├── /lib
|   ├── /Button
|       ├── /__tests__/
|       ├── /Button.js
|       └── /index.js
|
├── /tools/  //Build scripts, other tools
├── /node_modules/
└── package.json

https://github.com/kylpo/react-playbook/blob/master/component-architecture/5_Example-App-Structure.md

/lib/ explanation: Every component that is not "app specific" or a primitive component can be a candidate to be moved to the /lib/ folder. This allows for the possible side effect of hand-rolling your own component library as you code!

Primitive components are those that take in only primitives as their props and are functionally pure.

Redux "Ducks"

.
├── /ducks/
    ├── /MyDuck/
    |   ├── /__tests__/
    |   ├── actions.js
    |   ├── index.js
    |   ├── reducers.js
    |   ├── selectors.js
    |   ├── types.js
    |   ├── urls.js
    |   └── utils.js
    ├── /utils/ // Reducer specific utils
    ├── rootReducer.js
    └── types.js

https://medium.freecodecamp.org/scaling-your-redux-app-with-ducks-6115955638be

Coding Style

Component Creation

• Write a stateless functional component first
  • if (component requires state or life-cycle) Consider Hooks
  • if (component is comprised of multiple components or smaller pieces of functionality) Create container component
  • Move shared components out
    • if (app dependent) Keep in shared/MyComponent
    • if (!app dependent or primitive) Move to lib folder
• Avoid re-rendering component if possible

Styling

Semantic UI React
https://github.com/Semantic-Org/Semantic-UI-React

A JQuery-free version of Semantic UI that comes with React-based components. Semantic UI is great for themeing as well.

Testing

Libraries

Jest
https://jestjs.io/

Most popular React testing library. Comes with snapshot comparisons which is very useful for testing pure components.

Note: Function spies are now included included in Jest, so I've removed sinon for now

Enzyme
https://airbnb.io/enzyme/

A popular addition to Jest that provides additional functionality to traversing through component trees, as well as helper functions for testing, triggering user events being an example.

Strategies

From: https://github.com/kylpo/react-playbook/blob/master/best-practices/react.md

Write component tests that accomplish the following goals (from Getting Started with TDD in React)

• It renders
• It renders the correct thing
  • Default props
  • Varied props
• It renders the different states
• Test events
• Test edge cases
  • e.g. something that uses an array should be thrown an empty array

Build and Deploy

Starter kits

https://reactjs.org/community/starter-kits.html

This list contains many popular choices, but your choice is yours. Getting a good starter kit depends entirely on what you're looking to get out of your project and team.

Build Libraries

Babel
https://babeljs.io/

Transpiles your javascript down from the latest standards to backwards compatible, browser friendly source. Used for transpiling JSX to JS.

Webpack
https://webpack.js.org/

Bundles your files into static assets that are ready for production deploy. Many extensible plugins available.

ESLint
https://eslint.org/

Keeps your code nice and tidy by yelling at you with squigglies. You can link this to your IDE.

Great ESLint configs:
prettier-eslint
eslint-config-airbnb

Source Control

Branch Naming Strategies

From: http://www.guyroutledge.co.uk/blog/git-branch-naming-conventions/

type/component-name/title

Common Types:

• feature
• fix
• hot-fix
• refactor
• update
• upgrade
• remove

Component Name example:
login-form

Title example:
hoc-formik-input

Libraries

Form Helpers

Formik
https://github.com/jaredpalmer/formik

Creates an ephemeral state held by its components that abstracts away all the boilerplate that goes into creating and maintaining forms.

State Management Helpers

Reselect
https://github.com/reduxjs/reselect

Creates a selector where the first functions passed in compute props for a final function. If none of those props have changed, then that function is not run and the result from the previous invocation is returned.

This keeps the state from needlessly causing components to re-render.

Styling

classnames
https://github.com/JedWatson/classnames

Takes in conditionals that returns a space-delimited string for className.

import classnames from 'classnames';

let classes = classnames('sd-date', {
  current: date.month() === this.props.month,
  future: date.month() > this.props.month,
  past: date.month() < this.props.month
});

return (
  <button className={classes} />

  vs

  <button className={`button-default-style ${isActive ? "active" : ""}`} />
);

IDEs

Visual Studio Code
https://code.visualstudio.com/

Microsoft has opensourced this light-weight and highly extensible IDE. My personal favorite.