Top 7 Tools That Every React Developer Should Use For Faster React Development
Facebook
created React as a library maintained and developed by third party developers.
It is basically a lightweight JavaScript library that allows you to make
beautiful UIs for your web apps using reusable building blocks. These isolated
blocks are called components and can be used to develop different kinds of
applications. React also has an integrated ecosystem that includes several
tools, component libraries, IDEs, extensions for code editors and web browsers,
boilerplates, and more.
Components
allows you to divide the entire project into individual parts. This in turn
helps you gain control of your project workflow and simplify the distribution
of tasks within your team. Instead of worrying about the whole project, you can
spend time developing and testing every component. This approach also decreases
overall time spent on developing and testing apps.
Here are 7 easy to use tools for faster and
easier React development.
1. STORYBOOK
GitHub
describes Storybook as an interactive UI component dev and test that supports
React, React Native, Vue, and Angular. It is a powerful tool that acts as a
development environment for UI components. It comes with several add ons for
component design, documentation, and testing. This shortens the gap between
coding and output. One can develop each component in isolation from the rest of
the app using storybook for better reusability. the library contains components
that can be tinkered around with and tested instantly with hot-reload on the
web.
2. STYLEGUIDIST
React
Styleguidist is also a component development environment much like Storybook
but with some differences. Unlike Storybook, Styleguidist shows multiple
variations of different components. This feature makes it useful for
documentation and demos of different components. It comes with a hot reloaded
dev server and a living style guide which shows editable examples in markdown
files. It supports ES6, Flow, and TypeScript and works with React create app.
3. REACT COSMOS
React
Cosmos is a component developer that lets you add new functionalities to your
app even if you have already started the project. Cosmos uses fixtures and
proxy architecture to show the state of your app in real time while interacting
with running instances. It scans your project for components and allows you to
render them in any combination of props, context, and state. React Cosmos also
makes it possible to mock any external dependency such as the rest API or local
storage.
4. BIT
Bit is an
open source platform that can be used to organize components from different
apps and projects without any refactoring. It also makes them accessible to
discover, use, and develop when building new features and applications.
Components that are shares via Bit are available for installation with NPM/Yarn
or Bit itself. NPM/Yarn allows you to develop the components from different
projects and update the changes between them. To make discovering components
easier, Bit uses visual rendering, test results and docs parsed from the source
code itself. The main benefit of Bit is that it allows you to develop multiple
applications at once and use your components as building blocks for new
projects in the future.
5. REACT DEVELOPER TOOLS
It is
basically a Google Chrome extension that inspects the React component hierarchy
right inside your browser, including component props and state. The extension
adds a new tab to your chrome DevTools where you can see how the changes in a
component affect the other components. Facebook also released a Firefox
extension which has the same functionalities as the Chrome one. The search bar
allows you to quickly find and inspect the components you need, saving precious
development time.
6. REDUX DEVELOPER TOOLS
This is
another extension developed by Facebook that is available for both Chrome and
Firefox. It provides power ups for your Redux development workflow and also
lets you inspect every state and action payload. Redux DevTools can be
integrated with any architecture which handles the state. Multiple stores or
different instances can be created for the local state of every React
component. The logging UI itself can be customized as a React component.
7. CREATE REACT APP
Setting up
a new environment for a new project is not easy considering all the
requirements. The Create React App is a single command line tool that can
quickly help you get a new React app up and running. It requires zero
configurations and is suitable for any backend language. It sets up a developer
environment and optimizes the app for production. It creates a directory inside
the current folder and generates the initial project structure so you can
simply start coding.
These are
the main tools that most developers swear by. Several more tools exist which
can be explored as you gain valuable experience and grow more accustomed to the
React platform.
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