Tag: React

What is MUI and what do you need to know about it?

Posted on by venkatesh

ReactJS is one of the most popular open-source JavaScript frameworks for designing attractive and dynamic interfaces for business websites and mobile applications. However, to create impressive designs, ReactJS is combined with material UI or MUI. Some of the biggest platforms, like Netflix, Walmart, and Airbnb, use MUI in their websites and applications.

Previously known as Material-UI, the company that created this ReactJS package changed its name to MUI in September 2021. The title change was made to ensure users do not confuse MUI with Material Design, a system design concept.

If you still haven’t explored MUI for your React applications, you are missing a significant feature of React app and website design.

What is MUI?

MUI, or Material UI, is a massive library of UI design components that developers can easily import to build React applications. It is an open-source project that follows Google’s guidelines for creating an app or website components. One of the significant benefits of using material UI is that you have a solid customizable library of basic and advanced UI elements that you can import into your applications and websites. In addition to UI components, you can also download a ready-made collection of React templates and tools to design the most impressive interfaces with half the hard work.

How to access MUI in React?

MUI is available as an NPM package. Therefore, there is no difficulty in importing the package into your React application. All you need to do is use the following access command to install material UI:

npm install @mui/material @emotion/react @emotion/styled

Please note that this command assumes you have already installed React on your device. MUI has over a hundred different React components that designers and developers can use. Here are the categories in which these material UI components are listed: 

  • Data Display 
  • Data Grid 
  • Date/Time 
  • Feedback 
  • Inputs 
  • Layout 
  • Navigation 
  • Surfaces 
  • Utils 

Once you have installed MUI, you can import any required components for your project. You can include these design components within a specific file or a location throughout the UI. There are some valuable templates too, that you can use out-of-the-box. For instance, you get a sign-in page template in the MUI package that helps you set up clean design pages almost instantly. 

Why should every React developer use the MUI component library?

React is a robust framework for application development. There are several reasons why MUI must be part of your React developer toolkit. Here are the significant ones:

1. Much faster time-to-market

Time-to-market is a critical metric that decides your success in the highly competitive tech landscape. When you use Material UI, you get a good headstart as you use thoroughly tested UI elements in your projects.

Not only developers but frontend designers, too, can utilize MUI for rapid interface creation. It supports drag-and-drop elements that allow full-scale customization of apps and websites to suit a brand’s needs. There is no need to create components from scratch, which also accelerates usability testing. If the UI is not working for some reason, you can easily make changes on the go. 

2. A consistent UI design

Consistency creates trust, satisfactory user experience, and brand loyalty. If you generate UI components from scratch or import them from multiple sources, the appearance differences affect the interface’s overall consistency. When you use MUI in React applications, you use the same UI components throughout the project; this helps you create consistency and minimize errors and rework.

3. Accessibility

If you create interfaces for enterprise-level websites or apps, you must adhere to some mandatory accessibility standards. Material UI’s creators ensured that all the components of the MUI library meet the WCAD 2.0 accessibility guidelines. Developers and designers do not have to waste time investigating whether the components they use in their React applications are standardized or not. All UI components must be accessible to the test navigation, and user flows easily ensure they meet the accessibility standards.

4. Scalability

To create UI components from scratch, you must design, prototype, and test the components before scaling the product. But with MUI’s comprehensive component library, you get design elements that you can use in your prototype and scale right away. Even as a developer without any knowledge of designing, you can copy/paste React components from MUI to create appealing designs.

You can import the MUI X library with more advanced scalable features with components like data pickers, data grips, charts, and pagination.

Conclusion 

Every React developer must be familiar with the Material UI library. It is the most comprehensive UI library for the faster creation of scalable and standardized interfaces.

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5 useful cheat codes for React

Posted on by venkatesh

Facebook created React in 2013 as an alternative to AngularJS, the prominent JavaScript framework at the time. To better suit the requirements of Facebook’s server-side rendering, React was made very different from Angular. For instance, React is a dynamic library while Angular is a restrictive framework. React supports flexible TypeScript, but Angular supports only static TypeScript. Such differentiations led to the development of web frameworks by leaps and bounds.

Today, React is the second most popular JavaScript framework in the world. If you are getting started with this JS framework, it might seem overwhelming. However, our engineers created this React cheat sheet to give you an overview of some important React features in simple-to-understand snippets.

1. JSX

JSX is short or JavaScript XML which is a syntax extension of JavaScript to write HTML code. 

It will be a bit complicated if you have to write HTML in React without JSX. Here’s an example: 

const myelement = React.createElement(‘h1’, {}, ‘Hello World!’);

ReactDOM.render(myelement, document.getElementById(‘root’));

The same code can be restructured like this using JSX: 

const myelement = <h1>Hello World!</h1>;

ReactDOM.render(myelement, document.getElementById(‘root’));

Evidently, JSX makes it a lot easier and faster to write HTML elements in React code. In its absence, you will be forced to use the ReactDOM.render() function, which takes two arguments – the HTML code and the HTML element to render the code. 

Here’s an extensive JSX cheat sheet that React developers must check out.

2. React fragments

In React, it is required that all returned elements must be returned within a “parent” component. For example, consider the following code:

function MyComponent() {

  return (

    <h1>My header</h1>

    </p>My paragraph</p>

  );

} 

It is an invalid React code because here, two sibling elements, H1, and a paragraph, are returned from the same component. 

React has an element called a fragment. They are the components that allow wrapping or grouping multiple elements without adding an extra node to the DOM.

If you want to overcome this limitation, you can use a fragment.

// valid syntax

function MyComponent() {

  return (

    <>

      <h1>My header</h1>

      </p>My paragraph</p>

    </>

  );

} 

Here we did not wrap our elements in any container element like a DIV, instead used a fragment. The syntax for using React fragments is: 

<React.Fragment>

.

.

.

</React.Fragment> 

or 

<>

.

.

.

</>.

3. React conditionals

All React components and elements are displayed conditionally. A basic approach to creating a separate return is using an if-statement like this: 

function App() {

const isAuthUser = useAuth();

  if (isAuthUser) {

    // if our user is authenticated, let them use the app

    return <AuthApp />;

}

  // if user is not authenticated, show a different screen

  return <UnAuthApp />;

}

React codes using if-statement can be highly nested. It is possible to write a conditional within a return statement. It simplified the React code like this: 

function App() {

const isAuthUser = useAuth();

  return (

    <>

      <h1>My App</h1>

      {isAuthUser ? <AuthApp /> : <UnAuthApp />}

    </>

  ) 

}

You must wrap the entire conditional in curly braces. Also, a conditional must resolve to a value.

4. React context

You can use context to pass data to the React components tree without using props. The problem with props is that we are sometimes forced to pass them through components that don’t need them in React codes. This is known as props drilling. 

In the snippet below, the props are passed through a Body component that doesn’t need it:

function App() {

  return (

    <Body name=”John Doe” />

  );

} 

function Body({ name }) {

  return (

    <Greeting name={name} />

  );

} 

function Greeting({ name }) {

  return <h1>Welcome, {name}</h1>;

}

To overcome this issue, we use the createContext function from React. 

You can call context with an initial value. A createContext function has two components – a Provider and a Consumer property. The Provider is wrapped around the component tree through which the given value is to be passed. Next, you place the Consumer in the component from which you want to consume the value. 

Example code:

import { createContext } from ‘react’;

const NameContext = createContext(”);

function App() {

  return (

    <NameContext.Provider value=”John Doe”>

      <Body />

    <NameContext.Provider>

  );

} 

function Body() {

  return <Greeting />;

} 

function Greeting() {

  return (

    <NameContext.Consumer>

      {name => <h1>Welcome, {name}</h1>}

    </NameContext.Consumer>

  );

}

However, before you use the context to optimize the React code, see if you can better organize the components to avoid passing props through components that don’t require it.

5. React useState hook

Hooks were introduced in React version 16.8 and completely overhauled React’s use. They allow adding reusable, stateful logic to React function components.

One important React hook is useState. It does what it says; it allows React developers to use stateful values in function components.

The useState hook is preferable over a simple variable because when the component’s state is updated, it can display the updated value.

Here’s an example of using useState to increment a counter: 

import { useState } from ‘react’;

function MyComponent() {

  const [stateValue, setStateValue] = useState(initialValue);

}

We can identify the current count from the count variable and can increment the state by passing count + 1 to the setCount function like this:

import { useState } from ‘react’;

function Counter() {

  const [count, setCount] = useState(0);

function updateCount() {

    setCount(count + 1);

  }

return <button onClick={updateCount}>Count is: {count}</button>;

}

Conclusion

Even though it is fairly concise, this React cheat sheet covers the five most important features of the JavaScript framework that beginners should learn. As you practice and grow, you will discover many more features. Don’t be intimidated or overwhelmed; just start writing code. 

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React useEffect v/s useLayoutEffect Hook: Key differences

Posted on by girish

React is a popular frontend UI library that is used in almost 50 million projects each month. React, which is supported by Facebook, has a long history of dominance in the web development industry and a long list of notable clients, including Fortune 500 firms and both startups and established businesses.

React utterly depends on components, which are the basic building blocks of React applications. There are two approaches to writing a React component in the world of React. The first employs a functional approach, whereas the second employs a class-based approach. These days, functional components are quite popular, and the introduction of hooks has encouraged more people to adopt creating function-based components.

Some of the most useful hooks available are useState, useEffect, useRef, useLayoutEffect, useMemo, etc. In this in-depth article, we will cover the difference between the useEffect and useLayoutEffect hooks. 

What is the useEffect hook in React?

Eliminating the side effects of using class-based components is the driving force behind the development of useEffect Hook. One thing to keep in mind is that useEffect only runs after React renders your component, so your effect callback will not prevent browser painting. This is different from how class components behave, where componentDidUpdate and componentDidMount run synchronously following the rendering. This approach is more efficient, which is generally what you want most of the time.

For instance, actions like updating the DOM, obtaining data from API endpoints, configuring timers or subscriptions, etc., may have unintended side effects.

The following situations in functional components allow for the use of the useEffect hook to carry out operations (or side effects):

  • when a component is rendered (componentDidMount function in class-based components).
  • when a component undergoes an update (componentDidUpdate function in class-based components).
  • before a component is unmounted or removed (componentWillUnmount function in class-based components).

Most frequently, we use useEffect hooks to carry out actions such as obtaining data from an API, altering the DOM, or performing a specific method when the useEffect’s dependency changes.

How to write useEffect hooks in React

Every time the useEffect hook is activated, it returns a callback function that will execute the declared function. The dependency array decides when the useEffect should be triggered. If we have an empty dependency array, the useEffect will only work once when the component renders. If we have single or multiple dependencies, useEffect will be triggered whenever the dependencies undergo a change.

Let’s examine a straightforward example of useEffect in action.

 The output will be the following:

You can see that when the component renders, the useEffect hooks are only executed once. However, if there is another change in the DOM, it will cause the useEffect to be triggered for the second time. To avoid this, pass an empty dependency array. 

Now that we have a good idea about how the effect works, let’s discuss the useLayoutEffect hook in React.

What is useLayoutEffect hook in React?

React’s useLayoutEffect hook is almost identical to the useEffect hook. A function called effect and an array of dependencies are the first and second arguments, respectively, for the useLayoutEffect hook. 

After all DOM mutations have been completed by React, useLayoutEffect executes synchronously. If you need to measure the DOM (for example, to determine the scroll position or other styles for an element) and then modify the DOM or cause a synchronous re-render by changing the state, this can be helpful.

The useLayoutEffect hook’s syntax is almost identical to that of the useEffect hook. The effect, the first argument, has two possible outcomes: cleanup function or undefined. The code below demonstrates the useLayoutEffect function.

As you can see from the function above, useEffect and useLayoutEffect both accept an array of dependencies and an effect function as arguments, and they return either undefined or a cleanup function.

Let’s examine a sample of how to use the useLayoutEffect hook. 

The output of the following will be:

It is noticeable that useLayoutEffect functions in a manner identical to that of the useEffect hook. So what is the actual difference between these two hooks?

What is the difference between useLayoutEffect and useEffect hook?

The main difference between the useEffect hook and the useLayoutEffect hook is that the useEffect hook serves asynchronously, whereas the useLayoutEffect hook works synchronously. In simple words, we can say that the difference between useEffect and useLayoutEffect is in the time at which these functions are invoked.

It is useful to be aware of the steps that component re-render takes in order to comprehend when the hooks are called. Assuming that the useEffect hook is active in our app, we can get this series of events to happen.

  1. The user engages with the React app. Let’s just say the user clicks a button on the UI.
  2. The state of the components changes.
  3. The DOM is then mutated.
  4. Changes are then reflected on the browser screen.
  5. The function is invoked to clean up effects from the previous render if useEffect dependencies have changed.
  6. Following cleanup, the useEffect hook is invoked.

For the useLayoutEffect hook, the series of events will be

  1. The user interacts with the app. Let’s just say the user clicks a button on the UI.
  2. The state of the components changes.
  3. The DOM is then mutated.
  4. The function is invoked to clean up effects from the previous render if useLayoutEffect dependencies have changed.
  5. Following cleanup, the useLayoutEffect hook is invoked.
  6. The browser screen updates to reflect changes.

Your effect will typically involve synchronizing some state or props with something that doesn’t need to happen instantly or that doesn’t visually change the page. We might only need to retrieve data from an API, set an event handler, or take action when the state changes. The useEffect hook is employed to accomplish these kinds of tasks.

When to use useLayoutEffect hook in React

The useLayoutEffect hook should be used when your component flickers when the state is updated, which means that it first renders in a partially-ready state before re-rendering in its final state right away.

Now let’s compare useLayoutEffect and useEffect using an example:

 

We developed a simple app with a button element. When the user clicks the button, the value is updated to 0 and the dependency array of the useLayoutEffect array is value. Within the useLayoutEffect, we check the value and if it is 0, it changes the value from 0 to a random number.

In this example, the component is rendered twice, but the value is only updated once in the browser. Let’s look at the same example with useLayoutEffect.

 

 

You can see there is flickering when using useEffect since the component is rendered twice and the value is also updated twice.

Even though the component renders twice, the version with useLayoutEffect only updates visually once. On the other hand, the useEffect version renders twice, resulting in a blip where the value is briefly 0.

The main difference between the useEffect and useLayoutEffect hooks, as shown in the example, is the time at which they are fired. We will look into some real-world applications of these two hooks with some examples.

Let’s create an app that fetches data from a dummy backend API.

 

The output of the following code will be:

If you run this example on your machine, you will see that data is populated first in useLayoutEffect and then in useEffect. This is just because of the synchronous nature of the useLayoutEffect hook and the asynchronous nature of the useEffect hook.

UseLayoutEffect is preferred over useEffect hooks in the following situations:

Unforeseen visual or state changes

When dealing with inconsistent visual changes, the useLayoutEffect truly shines. When you use useEffect, you’ll notice a flicker before the DOM changes are painted, which is caused by how refs are passed on to custom hooks. These refs are initially null before being set when the attached DOM node is rendered.

When the effect does not require heavy computations 

Both useEffect and useLayoutEffect behave differently in terms of how heavy computations are handled. As previously stated, useEffect will postpone the execution of the effect function until after the DOM mutations have been painted, making it the obvious choice of the two. 

When we do heavy computation inside useLayoutEffect, we will block the DOM to re-render for some time. 99% of the time, we don’t need to block DOM updates. At this point in time, we only need to use useEffect and not useLayoutEffect.

Which is preferred, useEffect or useLayoutEffect?

The majority of the time, useEffect is the best option. If your code is causing flickering, try using useLayoutEffect instead and see if that tends to help.

Because useLayoutEffect is synchronous, the application will not update visually until your effect has finished running. If you have slow code in your effect, it may cause performance issues such as stuttering. Because most effects do not require breaking the default flow while they run, regular useEffect is always the best option in almost all cases, except a few.

Conclusion 

Congratulations on reaching this far! You’re a fantastic reader!!

In this detailed blog on useEffect v/s useLayoutEffect, we have seen various similarities as well as the uniqueness of useEffect and useLayoutEffect hooks. Not only did we understand the theory, but we also got our hands dirty by going through several real-world examples.

Now you know when to use useEffect and useLayoutEffect efficiently.

Happy Reacting!

 

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