About the Book
As far as new web frameworks and libraries go, React is quite the runaway success. It not only deals with the most common problems developers face when building complex apps, it throws in a few additional tricks that make building the visuals for such apps much, much easier. What React isn’t, though, is beginner-friendly and approachable. Until now. In Learning React, author Kirupa Chinnathambi brings his fresh, clear, and very personable writing style to help web developers new to React understand its fundamentals and how to use it to build really performant (and awesome) apps.
The only book on the market that helps you get your first React app up and running in just minutes, Learning React is chock-full of colourful illustrations to help you visualise difficult concepts and practical step-by-step examples to show you how to apply what you learn.
Build your first React app
Create components to define parts of your UI
Combine components into other components to build more complex UIs
Use JSX to specify visuals without writing full-fledged JavaScript
Deal with maintaining state
Work with React’s way of styling content
Make sense of the mysterious component lifecycle
Build multi-page apps using routing and views
Optimise your React workflow using tools such as Node, Babel, webpack, and others
Use Redux to make managing your app data and state easy
Table of Contents:
1 Introducing React
2 Building Your First React App
3 Components in React
4 Styling in React
5 Creating Complex Components
6 Transferring Properties
7 Meet JSX…Again!
8 Dealing with State in React
9 Going from Data to UI in React
10 Events in React
11 The Component Lifecycle
12 Accessing DOM Elements in React
13 Setting Up Your React Dev Environment Easily
14 Working with External Data in React
15 Building an Awesome Todo List App in React
16 Creating a Sliding Menu in React
17 Avoiding Unnecessary Renders in React
18 Creating a Single-Page App in React Using React Router
19 Introduction to Redux
20 Using Redux with React
About the Author :
Kirupa Chinnathambi has spent most of his life trying to teach others to love web development as much as he does.
In 1999, before blogging was even a word, he started posting tutorials on kirupa.com. In the years since then, he has written hundreds of articles, penned a few books (none as good as this one, of course!), and recorded a bunch of videos you can find on YouTube. When he isn’t writing or talking about web development, he spends his waking hours helping make the web more awesome as a Program Manager at Microsoft. In his nonwaking hours, he is probably sleeping—or writing about himself in the third person.
You can find him on Twitter (twitter.com/kirupa), Facebook (facebook.com/kirupa), or email (kirupa@kirupa.com). Feel free to contact him anytime.
Review :
Amazon Reviews of the First Edition
This is the best book to get up and running with React.JS I found this book to be an amazing introductory text to learning React. Leveraging creativity interspersed with a bit of humor, the author took complex topics and made it more easily understood. Even when the difficulty ramped up, Kirupa made the dry and mundane almost non-existent. I can't recall once wishing for the book to end. That's tough to do - definitely more art than science. If you're looking for a solid, working understanding of getting up & running with React - this is the book. (January 20, 2017)
Great book from start to finish I rarely review books. I don't even remember the last time I reviewed a book. I may have never reviewed a book in my life. In any event, I felt obligated to review this book because it was so well written. I've ready many programming books on many languages and this one is the only one to keep my attention all the way to the end. Every chapter builds upon the previous one. It starts out elementary and then works its way through more complex ideas. I understand JavaScript but this book explained to me how React works. The author is a born teacher and I appreciate his efforts! Thank you. (June 8, 2017)
Absolutely amazing Absolutely blown away with how good of a book this is. I've been trying different tutorials, along with a couple of paid video courses. The video courses were fairly good, but they started off with complex projects and built them from the ground up. While it was cool to see how a complex app is actually built with React, there is no replacement for how Kirupa has figured out how to explain everything so simply. One difference here is that he starts with the very minimal things you need to know, explains those, and then expands to something a little more complex in the next chapter. This, combined with some humor, is just perfect. I've read a lot of IT and development books over the years, and I think this may be the best one I've read. I'm only around halfway done with the book, but wow, again, I'm blown away. I don't generally write reviews much, but I had to on this one. You're a natural teacher man, and thank you for this one! Seriously, thank you. If I could give this one more than 5 stars, I absolutely would. (February 17, 2017)
Well Written I cannot comment enough on the readability of this text. Seasoned and rookie web developers should have no problem understanding the subject matter. (March 21, 2017)
Makes sense of difficult concepts, and is a fun, easy read This is actually the only tech book I have ever read cover-to-cover. The author is a natural teacher. I tried a different react book and a bunch of online tutorials, and the concepts just didn't "click" for me. But after reading this, I understand it alot better. If you're starting at square one with react, this is square one. Side note: it's also very nicely designed. Shouldn't matter that much for a tech book, but then again we ARE talking about the view layer here! (January 21, 2017)
Absolutely love this book Absolutely love this book! I have read other books and I've even taken a video course on React and this is the first time the author actually clearly explains the benefits of React. The other texts assumed the reader knows and jumps right in. I am a big reader and this is by far the best information on learning React that I've found. (January 25, 2018)
Great examples, code, and explanations Spectacular job of keeping things simple by only focusing on one point at a time, choosing great examples, and using readable code with well-crafted, simple explanations. Many authors try to achieve this the lazy way- by omitting large amounts of code and relying on the reader to download it and understand it on her own. By contrast, the Learning React author included all of the code in the book and was not afraid to repeat code when it reinforced his point. (May 8, 2018)
Excellent primer for React The author does a great job of introducing one concept at a time and then ties it all together. The overall tone of the book makes it easy to read cover to cover in one sitting. (January 31, 2017)
Great book for beginners Great book so far. I'm about 25% in and it's already paid off in my React class. Love the friendly writing style, the easy-to-understand code snippets, and the well written explanations. Great job.(January 26, 2018)
Skip the command line and learn how to build React apps first I'm learning React (after learning many other languages over the years). This is the single best book I've read to get started with a new language! The author has a terrific sense of humor and a logical progression from front to back. What had been the bane of my existence for React - dealing with setup of Node.js using the command line interface and the many issues I had getting done - he eliminated and put toward the end of the book. I actually got to enjoy going through the book, and try it all out before dealing with the command line. Talk about getting off to a good start! I still have a lot to learn, but I feel confident that I can learn what I need to know. (March 23, 2018)
A really great way to learn the fundamentals of ReactJS A really great way to learn the fundamentals of ReactJS. This books really breaks it down barney style and teaches you how to write react with JSX; which is the easiest way to learn the JS library. Buy this book if you are willing to learn the JS library. (September 14, 2017)
