The digital era has transformed the way businesses conduct their operations. Throughout areas like internet of things (IoT), metaverse, artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain, integrations to your existing systems require reliable architecture, both at the front and backend.
While there are several options for backend architecture, when you think about scalable frontend architecture, one name is synonymous with developers — React! Many tech companies like Facebook, Instagram, and Netflix have leveraged React.Js for building scalable applications.
React.Js is a Javascript library that is more than just any other frontend framework — it allows developers to build web applications with dynamic content without reloading the page. This can help produce a lightweight, fast, modern app that delivers an enhanced user experience.
Why is it important?
There are currently more than six billion smartphone users worldwide. This number is expected to increase to seven billion by 2024. Therefore, delivering a mobile experience for your customers requires highly responsive and interactive applications.
Take an example of a news feed feature on Facebook. It uses React.Js with a relay architecture, allowing users to access the news feeds even with a low-intensity network connection.
Though React.Js was born on Facebook, it is not limited to social media applications and can be used for several cases. Some of which we will discuss here, but before we do that, let’s briefly understand the benefits of React.Js.
Benefits of React.Js
A frontend framework needs to offer several features to enable scalability, flexibility, and enhanced user experience. React.Js comes with many features that make app building flexible and rapid. Some of the benefits that you can draw from React.Js features include:
- Speed: React.Js allows you to leverage individual components of your application on the client-side and server-side, which improves the development speed.
- Flexibility: Due to modular structure, the flexibility for developers increases with easier code maintainability.
- Performance: With virtual DOM and server-side rendering features, you can create faster applications with complex business logic.
- Ease of use: For developers with a bit of JavaScript knowledge, React.Js usage becomes easier compared to other frontend frameworks.
- Reusability: React.Js provides the ability to reuse UI components, making it more time-efficient for developers who don’t need to write code for every feature update.
Now that we know some benefits of using React.Js for your projects, here are some top use cases.
Types of Apps You Can Build With React.Js
Designing your frontend needs several considerations like a user-friendly interface, responsive web design, support for web APIs, and a loosely coupled architecture. You can even develop a backend application with a remote API based on the REST protocol.
Further, a React app will communicate with the API to render data on the device. At the same time, such an architecture can be great for some use cases, but it may need a different approach for others. Let’s understand how.
1. AR/VR Applications
Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality is one of the most promising technologies in recent years. With the major tech giants like Facebook and Microsoft investing in the creation of Metaverse, demand for such applications will arise.
According to Technavio, the AR/VR market is projected to accelerate at a CAGR of 46% with an incremental growth of $162.71 billion. So, if you are looking for technology that can help you cash in on the surging AR/VR market, React.Js can be a good option for you.
What makes React.Js so enticing for AR/VR apps?
It’s not just React.Js but a couple of things that you can leverage in combination for excellent AR/VR applications. For example, you can use React 360(React VR), a library of components that you can use to create a virtual reality experience for your apps.
It uses Three.Js for rendering, and so if you are to leverage React 360 library, the APIs need to be supported by React.Js. Combining the modern web APIs like WebGL and WebVR, React 360 provides a cross-platform VR experience.
React.Js offers declarative programming attributes, making it more attractive for AR/VR apps. You can create interactive applications, and React will automatically update the DOM. What is more exciting is how AR/VR apps will further see integration in almost all other types of applications as the idea of metaverse becomes more commonplace.
One such type of app where developers can use React is eCommerce apps, which will be an essential part of the metaverse ecosystem.
2. eCommerce Applications
When it comes to eCommerce performance, the frontend plays a key role. For example, an event like a flash sale or Black Friday sale can trigger several changes more frequently. So, if your app is not designed to handle such sudden changes on the front end, it can break.
So, what’s the way out? The answer is simple: React.
React.js inherently promotes the atomic design principle, which you can leverage for developing eCommerce applications and enhanced user experiences. The atomic design principle is where the entire design system consists of five distinct components or building blocks that combine to create contextual relationships between UI elements.
These building blocks of the atomic design principle are:
- Atoms are the smallest possible elements of a user interface or an application.
- Molecules are a group of atoms or smaller interface elements that have specific functionality.
- Organisms are molecules that form important and complex UI components that handle the business logic.
- Templates combine molecules, atoms, and organisms to formulate the user interface.
- Pages are the pinnacle of a design system combining all the above elements, making them more tangible.
React.js leverages the atomic principle and allows developers to use the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) approach. So, you get reusable components that can be used in combinations to reduce development time and quickly iterate when you need sudden changes.
A social media platform is another type of application where dynamic content is expected.
3. Social Media App
Social media applications have seen a mammoth growth over the past few years. Applications like TikTok have gained popularity to the level where they beat Facebook and others in terms of app downloads. However, it takes an excellent frontend that can handle the constantly changing content and enhance user experience.
React.js can help you with the lazy loading approach, which will enhance dynamic content loading. It comes with React.lazy and React.Suspense to support lazy loading of UI elements. Lazy loading is an approach to loading only the required elements until users demand the rest.
As you can see here, Pinterest uses lazy loading for its images as you scroll down. So, when you reach the bottom of the page, the images are loaded instead of loading them together. Similarly, you can use lazy loading with React.js for your social media web applications to create a seamless user experience.
One of the benefits of using React.js is virtual DOM. It is a programming approach where a virtual representation of the user interface is stored in memory and synced with the original DOM by the ReactDOM library.
It is also known as the “Reconciliation” and helps manage quick updates to the user interface through virtual DOM. This feature can be helpful in building data analytic dashboards.
4. Data Analytic Apps
With the rising demand for data analytics tools and virtualization dashboards, you can support your business or organization through React.js. Especially if you are looking to develop real-time analytics, React.js is an excellent option as virtual DOM helps with instant updates, avoiding updating the entire original DOM.
This increases the rendering speed and optimization of UI updates by representing real-time updates on the dashboard swift. In addition, due to React’s fast rendering of UI components and ability to automatically update the original DOM, you can quickly showcase the changes in data on the interface.
What’s more enticing with React.js is isomorphic capabilities that speed up the development process and reduce time-to-market. Moreover, the reusability of React.js also helps in reducing development efforts along with the powers of releasing iterations quicker.
If we discuss different apps you can develop with React.js, there is no chance of missing the sweet spot of React-based use cases: instant messaging apps.
5. Instant Messaging Apps
Instant messaging apps need real-time data updates to provide users with a smooth messaging experience. React.js can act as a WebSocket client and enable two-way communication in real-time.
WebSocket APIs are an advanced technology that enables two-way communication in real-time between the user’s browser and a server. The React application will work as the user’s browser (client) and allow real-time messaging.
Other than the WebSockets API, React.js allows you to leverage several best practices with which you can create flexible, reliable, cost-effective, and scalable frontend applications. However, it will depend on several factors like the skill of developers, the cost of hiring react developers, specific project requirements, and others.
The cost-effectiveness of your instant messaging application depends on how much a React developer may cost, which is again subjective to multiple aspects. For example, a senior React developer brings years of experience to the table but costs you around $125,000-$149,000.
At the same time, a junior developer may cost you $72,000-$94,939 with lower experience but a zeal to grow. Of course, the ultimate decision of whom to choose will depend on the specific needs of your project.
Conclusion
The frontend is one of the essential aspects of web application development as it is the front-facing part of the app with which a user will interact. React.js is a reliable frontend technology for different types of applications.
Whether you are a small business, medium-scale organization, or an enterprise, React.js has everything that you need to power digital transformation. Of course, how React.js fits in your current environment will depend on specific business requirements.
