Using React Hooks & Context to Avoid Adding Redux Too Early
Many people think of React and Redux as inseparable, despite the Redux author’s own advice to avoid using it “until you have problems with vanilla React.”
React / Redux
Loading States in React Components Using TypeScript’s Discriminated Unions
Many web applications need to load data from servers that will be shown to users. It’s important for the UI to handle loading states while the requests are in-flight. Let’s say, for example, that we have a page that will load a user’s profile. We want to be able to show a loading message, then […]
Rendering Legacy Pages inside of a React Component
Recently, I needed to implement an unusual feature for a React front end: a reusable component that displays server-rendered pages from a legacy version of the same app. If you’ve found yourself in a similar situation, I hope this guide will make life easy for you!
They Say, “Everything Is a Signal.” But What Exactly Is a Reactive Signal?
During my introduction to reactive programming, I was shown a giant reactive codebase and told, “Everything is a signal.” Of course, my first question was, “What is a signal?” In my opinion, this question is the sticking point for many reactive tutorials and explanations. Is a pipeline a good analogy for a signal? Maybe an […]
React Hook for Query String State Management
On a current project, we wanted to hoist page state out of a useReducer hook into a query string of the URL. We saw this as a continual need for the project going forward, so we wanted a convenient way to build new pages that stored their state in the URL’s query string. To do […]
Intuitive React Integer Input
Input fields are some of the most fundamental aspects of any application, and front-end validation is expected these days. Unfortunately, doing even simple validation is often more complicated than many clients expect.
Solving Nested Navigation in React with TypeScript
On a recent project, we needed to support multi-level tab bar navigation within our application. With multiple variations of tab bars, each page needed to know which tabs to show. We found that TypeScript offered a good solution.
Using React Storybook to Tackle Complex Multipart Stories
Often, when developing a new React component for a web app, I find myself with lots to do. For example, I may need to add a Redux container, API endpoint, some Redux actions, and the UI of the component. These tasks are all interconnected and interdependent, so it’s difficult to know where to start and […]
Redux Thunk Best Practices for Loading Initial Data
Every application needs to handle a couple of tasks: loading initial data for users and determining what page or screen they land on. Despite being order-dependent, this logic is often scattered into various parts of the application. This can lead to subtle bugs and makes it hard to answer simple questions like, “What will the […]
Three React Native Libraries I Can’t Live Without
As I wrap up my current project, a React Native app, my team has been thinking a lot about what went right and what went wrong when using the framework. Since it’s a pretty lightweight framework, we brought in a lot of external libraries to help us build our app. Besides some always-useful libraries, such […]