How Does React Make Your App and Product Scalable?

Complex web projects have to be able to sustain a vast majority of users and developers. It also needs to handle a lot of different UI-parts. In such cases, a large number of developers turn to building scalable web applications with React.

React is the number one library in the JavaScript ecosystem. It combines the speed of JavaScript and uses a new way of rendering web pages, which makes them highly responsive and more dynamic. One of the things about React is that it doesn't place any restrictions on the file structure of a project.

Moreover, React motivates skilled developers to think in terms of small, composable components with a possibility to reuse them in multiple places. It's reusability may speed up the development process and can result in less-amount of coding. Which in turn helps to eliminate errors. But why is using React to build scalable applications such a good idea?

To figure out how to make a scalable app with React, we must understand what processes it can simplify. Like other frameworks and libraries, React gives a boost to productivity, compared to the code that you wrote from the ground up. Let's figure how exactly it can help you build scalable React applications.

React is one of the libraries and frameworks that is easy to get started with. The entry threshold is low for those who are already experienced with HTML, CSS, and javascript.

React is used for building complex user interfaces. It is an open-source project with an enormous community of developers standing behind it. A lot of the developers write, create, and share their works made with React on resources like GitHub. Therefore, if you are thinking about how to make scalable applications, React is best suited for this.

Anyone can find a lot of different solutions for the most common tasks and problems. From specific UI solutions to complete React-based templates that can cut the development time in half. All of those open-source solutions can significantly cut the final cost of the project, making it easier and cheaper to scale your React application for building products. No matter how specific the task for creating UI is, the likelihood of finding the desired library on React is very high.

React gives developers a component approach out of the box. This allows reusing components. Since React uses virtual DOM, it can work with these components correctly. Virtual DOM enables apps to function quickly even if developers scale many components at once.

It can take a lot of time to redraw the entire page when changing one component. It can be lengthy even if we work directly with the DOM and try to figure out what has to be changed since read operations with the DOM are very slow.

The main point of Virtual DOM is that it allows us to do precise updates very quickly. If there is a giant page with a thousand components and something has changed in one of the said components, then the entire page will not be redrawn. In this case, only the necessary minimum will be updated, in which the changes have occurred. So we can say that virtual DOM allows React to update UI more optimally, efficiently, and quickly. That's what helps virtual DOM give speed and performance gains to any React project.

When we work with the virtual DOM, we are working with a lightweight copy of the real DOM instead of direct interaction. When changes are made and applied, the real DOM tree is compared to its virtual copy. React determines the difference between them, and starts redrawing what has been changed.

This approach makes React declarative. Developers specify what state the user interface should be in, and React enforces the DOM to match that state. Due to working with a virtual copy and applying only certain small changes, virtual DOM helps React render updates faster, which in turn provides an easier route to making a scalable react project.

React uses one-way binding which means that data goes in one way and one way only. Usually, developers organize React applications as a collection of nested child components within parent components of the higher-order.

One-way binding makes code more stable and easy to read which in turn helps for easier debugging. The React community comes to the rescue once again.

React does not impose any restrictions on the project file structure. There is no single correct way to structure an application written in React. This allows developers to write it in a way that is convenient for them.

React can be integrated into many different projects. This flexibility allows any application to scale. Note that though adding React to the tech stack can be done at any time, and not necessarily at the beginning of development, the effectiveness of this action must be taken into account.

If you thought about how to scale app with React, then it will be important for you to know about its full backward compatibility. This means that developers can add different library releases to the project and update them when needed. So if you plan to improve your project gradually, then React will give you that opportunity.

Moving between different versions of React is also straightforward. React's updates don't need to be installed one by one.

One of the key paradigms in React is functional programming. It allows developers to store and modify copies of components, rather than the components themselves.

This approach allows developers to maintain persistence, conduct safe operations with data. It also removes repetitive code and makes the scalable React project more transparent. The simplicity of functions improves testability. This is great for the scalability of React apps for enterprises and startups.

If you were thinking about how to scale React app for your products with its functional programming, then it will be important for you to know that the shortness of the functional code allows it to be easily maintained in large projects.

React was created in 2011 and today this JavaScript library has more than 164,000 stars on GitHub with over 1,500 contributors. The community is updating and improving React more and more each day, making it one of the most popular libraries to work with. But who exactly builds scalable web application with React? Sometimes, in order to scale your React application, you need to look at key players who have already taken advantage of it.

Airbnb had used a large number of different frameworks and libraries in order to find the best one for their website. They finally found the one in 2014. That year they switched to React, which they're still using for the desktop version of the site to this day.

For a company whose main focus lies in providing top-notch service for people who travel, providing great UX with matching UI is a major deal. Virtual DOM of React allows Airbnb to test new website functionality and UI components before implementation without any visible problems for site users.

However, Airbnb does more than just use React to improve its service. They are also huge contributors to it. Airbnb's style guide has gained great popularity among React users and it gets updated frequently to this day.

Speed, modularity, and performance are the main features of React that have attracted the development team from the popular video streaming service Netflix. The company uses React together with NodeJS.

For a service with more than 203 million subscribers, creating a high-quality and working interface has become a top priority. Combining NodeJS with ReactJS and RxJS gives Netflix users a simple, intuitive interface that fully meets modern user-friendly requirements.

Everything from AI service recommendations to full compatibility with completely different devices from a smartphone to a smart TV should work at the highest level. The same goes for different network bandwidth and video quality. And with help from React, it does.

Khan Academy is another great example of a scalable react app that a lot of people use. Khan Academy offers students hands-on exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized control panel.

React.js architecture helped the project increase overall website performance. Which is a key factor for a service with a lot of users and different content. It's worth noting that the simplicity of the components caught the attention of the entire team when React first hit the market.

As well as Airbnb, the Khan Academy shares its React components with the community through its GitHub page.

BBC's year in review pays close attention to rebuilding their website and moving it to the cloud. Millions of people got faster access to articles, video clips, and other content even with slow 2G and 3G networks. The technology they use has changed, from PHP to Node.JS/React.

The main goal of migrating from the previous PHP platform was to build a platform that would increase the prototyping speed, allowing changes and improvements based on constant feedback. As you can see, ReactJS is not the only technology BBC uses, but it contributes to the overall solution in bringing hundreds of articles each day to people across the globe.

Over 2020 BBC has migrated their pages across 41 discrete sites to a new React-based application called Simorgh. It allows you to boost performance and increase accessibility. Simorgh supports code for multiple languages and works perfectly fine with huge volumes of traffic.

Using React scaling for large applications is not new to us. We used React in some of the most complex projects like Arctic. This project management software was written with React as it helped us to provide the coherence of all processes and modules on the site. We had to work with a large amount of data and make it linked together with a reflection across all of the affected accounts.

Also, based on our experience, we have collected a single template from the whole variety of components in the open-source community. It includes the best practices for scalable ReactJS enterprise app development for React community around the world. We use parts of this template to speed up the development process of the projects we are working on.

We also used React for one of our internal mailing communications services. We wanted to make this product quickly and efficiently, so we couldn't find a better solution than React.

As we mentioned before React takes on a lot of low-level things. That allows you to focus on business logic when developing a project. Also, React handles the task of properly interacting with the browser. This also increases the rendering speed of the content. Thus, using React to build scalable large applications seems like a very rational decision.

When talking about using React for better SEO optimization, it is worth noting that SSR for all frameworks and libraries is better than for code that is written from scratch. Plus, with React you can connect SSR at any stage of a project's life. That might give you some boost in search results as well.

A large React community allows you to simplify work and reduce development time by purchasing existing third-party tool kits. For example, we at Aspirity have created our UI-kit for the React. We use it to speed up the development of React-based projects instead of building everything from scratch.

So if you are looking for a company that will help you implement your project at React, you have come to the right place. Just leave your contacts in the form below, we will contact you and discuss how to make a scalable React app.

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