React JumpStart | Fast Track to React for Skilled Web Developers

Course Objectives

Working in a hands-on learning environment led by our expert web development team, students will gain:

• A solid understanding of React components
• An in-depth knowledge of how React works
• An understanding of what Redux is
• How to use inline styles for perfect looking components
• A high-level coverage of testing React components using Jest and Enzyme
• A deep understanding of data-driven modeling with props and state
• How to use client-side routing for Single Page Application(SPA) pages in your apps
• How to debug a React application

Need different skills or topics?  If your team requires different topics or tools, additional skills or custom approach, this course may be further adjusted to accommodate.  We offer additional React, web development and design courses which may be blended with this course for a track that best suits your development objectives.

Course Prerequisites

In order to be successful in this class, incoming attendees are required to have current, hands-on experience in developing basic web applications, and be versed in HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript.  This is an intermediate level web development class, designed for experienced web developers new to React that need to further extend their skills in web development.

Please see the Related Courses tab for specific Pre-Requisite courses, Related Courses that offer similar skills or topics, and next-step Follow-On Courses and Learning Path recommendations.

Take Before: Attendees should have experience with the topics in the following courses, or should have recently attended these as a pre-requisite:

• TT4650 Introduction to HTML5/CSS3 and JavaScript (Six months of web development using HTML and CSS)
• TT4110 Modern JavaScript Essentials
• Prior experience with React is not required.
• A basic knowledge of using NPM packages is beneficial but not required.
• A basic knowledge WebPack with Babel is also beneficial but not required.

Take After: Our core training courses provide students with a solid foundation for continued learning based on role, goals, or their areas of specialty.  Our web developer learning paths offer a wide variety of continued learning paths such as:

• Additional React, Redux, NodeJS / MEANStack, Angular or other next level web development courses
• Web security training
• Please contact us for recommended next steps tailored to your longer-term education, project, role or development objectives.

Course Agenda

1. Course Overview

2. React Introduction

• What is React?
• Its origins WRT Angular
• React's 3 design principles
• Composition of components
• How is React so darned fast?
• The virtual DOM
• One-way data flow
• How a React app works - a peak under the covers
• Transpiling, bundling, minifying with webpack

3. Redux intro

• It's a library
• The single responsibility principle
• Why Redux?
• Why Redux with React?
• Its history and growth
• The 4 concepts of Redux
• State
• Pure functions
• Compoosition
• Immutability
• The parts of Redux
• The big picture of Redux

4. create-react-app

• The need for CRA - webpack, npm, babel, JSX, eslint, es2015, jest, etc
• Using npx
• The only build dependency needed
• Watch mode
• Linting code
• Ejecting
• Running unit tests

5. Stateless Functional Components

• Why less is more
• A gentle intro to JSX
• The 7 rules of JSX
• When JSX deviates from the W3C standards
• 3 simple steps to creating a component
• Hosting a component

6. Styling React components

• Styling with CSS
• Specifying Inline Styles
• Importing styles
• Using npm libraries
• The trick to importing images

7. Events in React

• React's synthetic events
• Why do they need to add events?
• The quick way to tell the difference
• The event object is reused!
• Passing values to the handler
• Creating your own custom events

8. Composition with React

• How to compose
• Data flowing down - props
• Why not 2-way binding?
• Data flowing up by emitting an event
• Passing data between sibling and cousin components
• All the ways to communicate and the cleanest solution

9. React router

• How to create a SPA in React
• What React router is and where it came from
• 4 easy steps to routing
• How to define the domain of a router
• How to create routes
• How to route users via a link
• How to route users via a url
• How to route users via JavaScript
• How to read route parameters

10. Expressions

• Demystifying expressions - how to think about them
• Nesting JSX in expressions and vice-versa
• Conditional rendering
• Iterating collections
• What does key do for me?
• Calling functions that return JSX

11. React Hooks

• The case for Hooks
• History of Hooks
• useState() (Multiple vs Single)
• useEffect()
• useContext()
• useReducer()
• How to enable them
• Tips and tricks with hooks

12. Managing state

• Defining state in React
• React state != Redux state
• Stateful components are classes
• How to initialize state in the constructor and when not to
• Updating state with this.setState()
• Asynchronous updates
• The secrets of upserting state
• Forms in React
• Controlled vs. Uncontrolled forms
• How to solve the update problem
• Insider tips for state in React

13. The React Lifecycle (Time permitting)

• Birth and death of a component
• constructor
• getDerivedStateFromProps
• componentDidMount
• componentWillUnmount
• Updating a component
• shouldComponentUpdate
• getSnapshotBeforeUpdate
• componentDidUpdate

14. PropTypes (Time permitting)

• Why propTypes?
• All the types that can be used
• Using in class-based components
• Using in functional components
• How to handle extra props

Course Materials

Student Materials: Each participant will receive a Student Guide with course notes, code samples, software tutorials, step-by-step written lab instructions, diagrams and related reference materials and resource links. Students will also receive the project files (or code, if applicable) and solutions required for the hands-on work. Any courseware of lab materials provided in a cloud (if applicable) will also be made available to you separately.

Hands-On Setup Made Simple! Our dedicated tech team will work with you to ensure our ‘easy-access’ cloud-based course environment, or local installation, is accessible, fully-tested and verified as ready to go well in advance of the course start date, ensuring a smooth start to class and effective learning experience for all participants. We can also help you install this course locally if preferred. Please inquire for details and options.