The Road to learn React

The Road to learn React teaches you the fundamentals of React. You will build a real world application along the way in plain React without complicated tooling. Everything from project setup to deployment on a server will be explained. The book comes with additional referenced reading material and exercises with each chapter. After reading the book, you will be able to build your own applications in React. The material is kept up to date by me and the community.

In the Road to learn React, I want to offer a foundation before you start to dive into the broader React ecosystem. It has less tooling and less external state management, but a lot of information around React. It explains general concepts, patterns and best practices in a real world React application.

You will learn to build your own React application. It covers real world features like pagination, client-side caching and interactions like searching and sorting. Additionally you will transition from JavaScript ES5 to JavaScript ES6 along the way. I hope this book captures my enthusiasm for React and JavaScript and helps you to get started.

What you can expect

• Hacker News App in React
• no complicated configuration
• create-react-app to bootstrap your application
• efficient lightweight code
• only React setState as state management (so far…)
• transition from JavaScript ES5 to ES6 along the way
• the React API with setState and lifecycle methods
• interaction with a real world API (Hacker News)
• advanced user interactions
• client-sided sorting
• client-sided filtering
• server-sided searching
• implementation of client-side caching
• higher order functions and higher order components
• snapshot test components with Jest
• unit test components with Enzyme
• neat libraries along the way
• exercises and more readings along the way
• internalize and reinforce your learnings
• deploy your app to production

What you need

Before you start to read the book, you should be familiar with HTML, CSS and JavaScript (ES5). The book will teach ES6 and beyond. When you come from a different SPA framework or library, you should be familiar with the basics. When you just started in web development, you should feel comfortable with HTML, CSS and JavaScript to learn React.