Preface
React was built by Meta to provide more structure to its code base and allow it to scale much better. React worked so well for Facebook that they eventually made it open source. Today, React is the dominant technology for building frontends; it allows us to build small, isolated, and highly reusable components that can be composed together to create complex frontends. With advancements such as React Server Components, React has further expanded its capabilities, enabling developers to seamlessly combine server-side rendering and client-side interactivity for highly optimized and dynamic applications.
TypeScript was built by Microsoft to help developers more easily develop large JavaScript-based programs. It is a superset of JavaScript that brings a rich type system to it. This type system helps developers catch bugs early and allows tools to be created to navigate and refactor code robustly.
This book will teach you how to use both of these technologies to create large, sophisticated frontends that are easy to maintain, while also exploring modern features such as React Server Components to enhance performance and productivity.
Who this book is for
If you are a developer who wants to create large and complex frontends with React and TypeScript, this book is for you. The book doesn't assume you have any previous knowledge of React or TypeScript - however, basic knowledge of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS will help you get to grips with the concepts covered.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Getting Started with React, covers creating React projects and the fundamentals of building React components. This includes making a component configurable using props and interactive using state.
Chapter 2, Getting Started with TypeScript, starts with the fundamentals of TypeScript and its type system. This includes using inbuilt types as well as creating new types. The chapter then covers creating a React component with TypeScript types.
Chapter 3, Using React Hooks, details the common React Hooks and their typical use cases. The chapter also covers how to use the Hooks with TypeScript to make them type-safe.
Chapter 4, Approaches to Styling React Frontends, walks through how to style React components using several different approaches. The benefits of each approach are also explored.
Chapter 5, Using React Server and Client Components, covers how and when to use React Server Components and Client Components and also how to compose them together.
Chapter 6, Creating a Multi-Page App with Next.js, covers the fundamentals of building multi-page apps in a popular React framework called Next.js. This includes implementing different pages, links between them, and page parameters.
Chapter 7, Server Component Data Fetching and Server Function Mutations, demonstrates how React Server Components can fetch data from a database. The chapter also includes mutating database data using a React Server Function.
Chapter 8, Client Component Data Fetching and Mutations with TanStack Query, covers how React Client Components can fetch and mutate data from a database using a popular library called TanStack Query.
Chapter 9, Working with Forms, explores how forms can be implemented using several different approaches, including the latest React Hooks and a popular forms library.
Chapter 10, State Management, walks through how React state can be shared between different components. Several approaches are explored along with their benefits.
Chapter 11, Reusable Components, brings in several patterns for making React components highly reusable but still type-safe.
Chapter 12, Unit Testing with Vitest and the React Testing Library, first delves into how functions can be tested with Vitest. The chapter then moves on to how React components can be tested with the help of the React Testing Library.
To get the most out of this book
To follow along with this book, you'll need to have the following technologies installed on your Windows or macOS computer:
If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code from the book's GitHub repository (a link is available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.
Download the example code files
You can download the example code files for this book from GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Learn-React-with-TypeScript-Third-Edition/tree/main/. If there's an update to the code, it will be updated in the GitHub repository.
We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!
Conventions used
There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.
Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "We used the Form component from Next.js to optimize the form submission performance."
A block of code is set as follows:
export default function Home() { return ( <main> </main> ); }
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
import Form from 'next/form'; export function ContactForm() { return ( <
Form ... > ... </
Form> ); }
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
npm run dev
Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example: "In the running app, try clicking the Done button to mark an item as done."
Tips or important notes
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