Preface

This book will help you take your React knowledge to the next level by showing how to apply both basic and advanced React patterns to create cross-platform applications. The concepts of React are described in a way that's understandable to both new and experienced developers; no prior experience of React is required, although it would help.

In each of the 10 chapters of this book, you'll create a project with React or React Native. The projects created in these chapters implement popular React features such as Hooks for re-using logic, the context API for state-management, and Suspense. Popular libraries, such as React Router and React Navigation, are used for routing, while the JavaScript testing framework React Testing Library and Cypress are used to write unit and integration tests for the applications. Also, some more advanced chapters involve a GraphQL server, and Expo is used to help you create React Native applications.

Who this book is for

The book is for JavaScript developers who want to explore React tooling and frameworks for building cross-platform applications. Basic knowledge of web development, ECMAScript, and React will assist in understanding key concepts covered in this book.

The supported React versions for this book are:

• React - v18.0
• React Native - v0.64

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Creating a Single-Page Application in React, will explore the foundation of building React projects that can scale. Best practices of how to structure your files, packages to use, and tools will be discussed and practiced. You'll learn about React architecture while building a Single-page application. Also, webpack and Babel are used to compile code.

Chapter 2, Creating a Portfolio in React with Reusable Components and Routing, will explain how to set up and re-use styling in React components throughout your entire application. We will build a GitHub Card application to see how to use CSS in JavaScript and re-use components and styling in your application. Next to this, you'll learn about implementing navigation with React Router v6.

Chapter 3, Building a Dynamic Project Management Board, will cover how to reuse application state-logic from components by using Hooks. You'll learn how to build custom Hooks and interact with Web APIs to make draggable components. Styled Components are introduced to make it easier to style React components in a scalable way.

Chapter 4, Build a Server-Side-Rendered Community Feed Using Next.js, will discuss routing, ranging from setting up basic routes, dynamic route handling, and how to set up routes for server-side rendering. Therefore the React web framework Next.js will be used as you'll learn while building an application based on Stack Overflow.

Chapter 5, Build a Personal Shopping List Application Using Context and Hooks, will show you how to use the React context API with Hooks to handle the data flow throughout the application. We will create a personal shopping list to see how data can be accessed and changed from parent to child components and vice versa with Hooks and the context API.

Chapter 6, Build an Application Exploring TDD Using React Testing Library and Cypress, will focus on unit testing with assertions and snapshots. You'll learn how to manage test coverage, and implement visual integrations tests using the Cypress framework. We will build a hotel review application to see how to test components and data flows.

Chapter 7, Build a Full-Stack E-Commerce Application with Next.js and GraphQL, will use GraphQL to supply a backend to the application. This chapter will show you how to set up a Full Stack React application with Next.js including a basic GraphQL server. We will build an e-commerce application to see how to create a server, send requests to it, and handle authentication.

Chapter 8, Build an Animated Game Using React Native and Expo, will discuss animations and gestures, which are what truly distinguishes a mobile application from a web application. This chapter will explain how to implement them. Also, the differences in gestures between iOS and Android will be shown by building a card game application that has animations and that responds to gestures.

Chapter 9, Build a Full-Stack Social Media Application with React Native and Expo, will cover scaling and structuring React Native applications, which are slightly different from web applications created with React. This chapter will outline how to use native APIs of the mobile device, such as using the Camera, while building a Full Stack social media application to examine the best practices for React Native.

Chapter 10, Creating a Virtual Reality Application with React and Three.js, will discuss how to get started with React and Three.js by creating a panorama viewer that gives the user the ability to look around in the virtual world and create components inside it. The application you'll build will look like a game you can play in Virtual Reality (VR).

To get the most out of this book

All the projects in this book are created with React or React Native. Prior knowledge of JavaScript is required for most chapters in this book. Although all the concepts of React and related technologies are described in this book, we advise you to refer to React docs if you want to find out more about a feature. In the following section, you can find some information about setting up your machine for this book and how to download the code for each chapter.

For the applications that are created in this book, you'll need to have at least Node.js v14.19.1 installed on your machine so that you can run npm commands. If you haven't installed Node.js on your machine, please go to https://nodejs.org/en/download/, where you can find the download instructions for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

After installing Node.js, run the following commands in your command line to check the installed versions:

• For Node.js (should be v14.19.1 or higher):

  node -v

• For npm (should be v6.14.14 or higher):

  npm -v

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.

The contents of this book use the latest available version when this book is completed in April 2022. Any updates after this date, might not work with the functionalities described in this book. It's advised to follow the official React and React Native documentation to get more information on the features that got released after this book was published.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/React-Projects-Second-Edition. 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!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots and diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781801070638_ColorImages.pdf.

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: "If we look at the source code for this component in App.js, we'll see that there's already a CSS header element in the return function."

A block of code is set as follows:

.App-logo {

  height: 40vmin;

  pointer-events: none;

}

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 './Header.css';

- function Header() {

+ function Header({ logo }) {

    return (

      <header className='App-header'>

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

npx create-react-app chapter-2

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: "Select System info from the Administration panel."

Tips or important notes

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