ReactJS

React: React Fiber, React Gamekit, Serverless Architecture, and React Loadable

Oct 28, 2019

3 min read

Video interviews with Sebastian Markbage, Ken Wheeler, James Kyle, Sophia Shoemaker

The React community has had a lot of excitement and innovation in the past few months. Some of these ideas and projects include React Fiber, React Gamekit, Serverless Architecture, and React Loadable. Updates in projects such as React Router are having a big impact on the community as well.

React + Serverless Architecture

Sophia Shoemaker Shares Info on Serverless Architecture and How She Started Her Journey with React

Servers used to be widely known for holding data and logic for applications. However, with React in the picture, a movement has emerged. These same components are now gravitating more towards the clients.

With this shift, came the idea of using Serverless architecture, coupled with Lambda, to create applications. Without monitoring, balancing, or tuning often involved when using servers to create apps, this method proved to be more efficient and better overall, in terms of user interaction.

To Sophia, React was the framework which allowed her to truly enhance her knowledge and understanding of javascript. Moreso than JQuery and Backbone, which she worked on for quite some time before deciding to look into other technologies. She explains the other benefits of React and how the future looks bright for this JS Library as it continues to improve.

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React Music, React Gamekit, and Spectacle

Ken Wheeler Expresses His Love for Being Creative with React Projects

Ken Wheeler dives into the many projects he’s been involved with such as Spectacle, Slick Carousel, React Music, and React Gamekit. He touches on how he came up with Spectacle after using Keynote, and elaborates on the perks he gains from this creation.

React Gamekit, allows developers to build games using React or React Native. It opens up a parallel physics world that individuals can fully explore in, using characters of their own.

When asked about the many great things that have come out of React, Ken mentions Virtualized, React Hardware and React Native. He also shares a little bit about creating mobile-controlled weapons (which he finds a blast!) and also talks about how the React community holds some of the most friendly and innovative people.

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React, React Loadable, and the React Community

James Kyle Talks React, React Loadable, and the Open Source Community

As a developer, there comes a time when your application becomes large enough, that you need to split it apart into different routes, and load them individually, asynchronously. React Loadable was written by James to do just that. By using the library, developers can break their code apart at the component level. James continues to build around this project, with the hopes of creating an application that can help deliver bundles more efficiently.

Being involved with so many javascript projects, James describes Open Source as being the one community he’s most passionate about. Being able to use OSS to deliver tools that people around the world can use to solve their problems is what keeps him driven. He also talks about a slight divide in the React vs. React Native, and how it’s important that people stay together. Being able to discover ways to collaborate and for everyone to gather around standards is valuable. And this can’t happen unless people are willing to work with one another in sharing solutions, to create solutions.

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React Fiber and Web Assembly

Sebastian Markbage on The React Core Team, React Fiber and Web Assembly

Sebastian tells us the story of working at Facebook, working on data visualizations frameworks and looking at web solutions before getting into React. Once he discovered React, he started to use it for art and graphics. Sebastian describes his experience when React was first introduced to the JS community. There was a lot of criticism and disapproval in the beginning which died down once a greater ecosystem was built around the framework. To Sebastian, having an ecosystem and unification are vital when creating new technology.

React Fiber came into existence after a lot of experimentation with Facebook. He describes one of the key features of React Fiber being functionality — everything is async and immutable. One other project briefly discussed in the interview was ReactVR, and how it started.

Lastly, Sebastian is asked about his interest in Web Assembly and upcoming news to expect from React.

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Conclusion

React continues to evolve and progress as the open source community and core team develops new ways to improve the library. Learn more about the React library here.

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We love helping teams with projects that have missed their deadlines or helping keep your strategic digital initiatives on course. Check out our case studies and our clients that trust us with their engineering.

CSS Hooks: A new way to style your React apps

In the world of web development, the management of styles has always been a crucial aspect of building modern and responsive user interfaces. With the rise of CSS in JS libraries like Material UI and Chakra, developers have started creating dynamic and reusable styles using JavaScript; however, the performance implications of these libraries have led to the exploration of alternative solutions. One such solution is CSS Hooks, a library that offers a different approach to managing styles in web applications. The Problem with CSS in React and CSS in JS Libraries In React applications, you typically write styles directly with the style prop by applying classes with className, or if you’re using a framework like Material UI or Chakra then you may use the sx attribute, which is more powerful than the baseline attributes. There are some performance concerns in the case of the sx attribute specifically. The framework has to dynamically generate classes with your styles and apply them to the document whenever it is used. This can become an issue with large and complex applications as your styles will be regularly regenerated on the fly as the user navigates through the application. This has led developers to seek alternative solutions that offer similar flexibility but with better performance. Introduction to CSS Hooks CSS Hooks improve upon the aforementioned issues by pre-generating your CSS using configuration hooks. The styles that these hooks generate remain static during the lifetime of the application and are reused wherever possible. CSS variables are utilized under the hood whenever dynamic behavior is needed. By dynamic behavior, I’m referring to advanced CSS features such as pseudo-class selectors and media queries, which are both traditionally unavailable for use with inline styles. CSS Hooks utilize an interesting trick under the hood to accomplish this, which we will now explore. The Power of CSS Variables and the Fallback Trick As mentioned before, CSS variables are utilized in order to support using advanced dynamic behavior such as pseudo-selectors in our inline styles. CSS variables are core to something known as the “fallback trick”. The gist of how the fallback trick works is to have the pseudo-selector or media query toggle the state of a variable between initial and an empty invalid value, and then we put the value that we actually want to toggle as the “fallback” value in the reference to the CSS variable inside of the inline style itself. Changing this fallback value inside of an inline style essentially allows us to control the values used by the pseudo-selector without having to regenerate linked stylesheets as we only have to change the inline style attribute. This is best explained with an example: ` This plain HTML and CSS code effectively allows us to utilize the focus pseudo-selector on any element that we want using inline styles only. This is what CSS Hooks effectively does in the background when you use dynamic styles. No nasty re-renders and mucking with stylesheets needed! How to use CSS Hooks Now that we know how CSS Hooks fundamentally work, let’s try using them. The library itself is much easier to use than the aforementioned example. Installation and usage of CSS Hooks is easy. Firstly, we must install the @css-hooks/react package into a React project with the package manager of your choice (npm, pnpm yarn, etc). Once that’s done, all that’s left is a little bit of configuration. You have to first use a utility function called createHooks that is exported from the package we just installed. The result of that function returns a couple of variables in an array that can be deconstructed, the first being a stylesheet in the form of a string, and the second being a function. ` I recommend putting this in a separate file that can be imported from multiple other places in the project as this is where we will be configuring hooks across the project. We’re exporting both hooks and css, and both are important. We need to include hooks into the DOM as it contains the styles of the hooks that we’ll be referencing in our components. In your root component you need to add the following tag so that the generated CSS can be used. ` How this is done may vary based on the libraries that you are using. After that’s done, you can integrate CSS Hooks into your components while writing inline styles mostly just like you would do normally, with the only change being the addition of an additional call to the css function that we exported earlier: ` Now that the core boilerplate is set up, your components can now utilize CSS Hooks in theory; however we need to actually add some hooks to start with before we can use them, or else we’ll just be limited to basic styles in the same way that React inline styles are. Make your own hooks We can define our hooks inside of the css-hooks file that we created earlier, the same one that exports the css helper function that gets CSS Hooks working with our components. Hooks are defined in the options parameters that are currently empty. Defining a simple hook that allows us to define inline hover styles for a component is very easy and can be done as follows: ` Although both the key and the value in this example are the same, they both serve different purposes. The key is the name of the hook that we reference when we want to use it, while the value is the spec. The spec is the actual CSS selector that we’re writing. The name can be anything that you want it to be so long as it doesn’t clash with any existing style properties or hooks. Recommended hooks Although making your own hooks may be necessary at times, there is another repository provided by the CSS Hooks authors that adds a way to generate many useful hooks called @css-hooks/recommended. I highly recommend using this library to generate your hooks if at all possible, and the usage is pretty simple. Here’s an example showing how you can use it to generate media queries, color scheme specific styles and pseudo-selectors: ` Then with that done, these can be utilized as follows: ` We can also modify the hooks configuration to add our own hooks in addition to the recommended hooks by using the spread operator: ` Then that custom hook can be used by simply using its key name: ` Summary CSS Hooks offers a performant alternative to traditional CSS in JS libraries by leveraging CSS variables and providing a unique approach to managing styles in web applications. By pre-generating the stylesheet based on configured hooks and utilizing CSS Variables for dynamic behavior, developers can create reusable styles without the performance overhead associated with dynamic stylesheet generation. If you're interested in exploring CSS Hooks further, be sure to check out @CSSHooks for more information. You can also find some of the examples demonstrated here in a working app in our demos repository. Thank you for reading!...

Feb 28, 2024

5 mins

CSSReact

Next.js Route Groups

Starting from Next.js 13.4, Vercel introduced the App Router with a whole set of new and exciting features. The way we organize the routing in our application has changed radically compared to previous versions of Next.js, as well as the definition and usage of Layouts for our pages. In this article, we will focus on what is called Route Groups, their use cases, and how they can help us in our developer experience. Basic introduction to the new App Router In version 13, Next.js introduced a new App Router built on React Server Components, which supports shared layouts, nested routing, loading states, error handling, and more. The App Router works in a new directory named app Creating a page.tsx file inside the app/test-page folder allows you to define what users are going to see when they navigate to /test-page. So folder’s names inside app directory define your app routes. You can also have nested routes like this: In this case, the URL of your page will be /test-page/nested-page By default, components inside app are React Server Components. This is a performance optimization and allows you to easily adopt them, and you can also use Client Components. Layouts In Next.js, a Layout file is a special component that is used to define the common structure and layout of multiple pages in your application. It acts as a wrapper around the content of each page, providing consistent styling, structure, and functionality. The purpose of a Layout file is to encapsulate shared elements such as headers, footers, navigation menus, sidebars, or any other components that should be present on multiple pages. By using a Layout file, you can avoid duplicating code across multiple pages and ensure a consistent user experience throughout your application. To create a Layout file in Next.js, you typically create a separate component file, such as Layout.tsx, and define the desired layout structure within it. This component can then be imported and used on individual pages where you want to apply the shared layout. By wrapping your page content with the Layout component, Next.js will render the shared layout around each page, providing a consistent look and feel. This approach simplifies the management of common elements and allows for easy updates or modifications to the layout across multiple pages. Here is an example of how to use a Layout file with the new App Router Route Groups In Next.js, the folders in your app directory usually correspond to URL paths. But if you mark a folder as a Route Group, it won't be included in the URL path of the route. This means you can organize your routes and project files into groups without changing the URL structure. Route groups are helpful for: 1. Organizing routes into groups based on site sections, intent, or teams. 2. Creating nested layouts within the same route segment level: - You can have multiple nested layouts in the same segment, even multiple root layouts. - You can add a layout to only a subset of routes within a common segment. To create a route group inside your app folder you just need to wrap the folder’s name in parenthesis: (folderName) Since route groups won’t change the URL structure your page.tsx content will be shown under the/inside-route-group path. Use cases Route groups are amazing when you want to create multiple layouts inside your page: Or if you want to specify a layout for a specific group of pages You need to be careful because all the examples above can lead you to some misunderstanding. *What is root layout? The top-most layout is called the Root Layout. This required layout is shared across all pages in an application.* As you can see, the route folder in the two examples above always has a well-defined root layout. This means that the specific layouts we have defined for the various groups will not replace the root layout, but will be added to it. However, Route Groups also allow us to redefine the root layout. Specifically, they allow us to define different root layouts for different segments of pages. All we have to do is remove the common Root Layout file, create some Route groups, and re-define the different Root layout files for every group in the route folder: In this way, we will have pages with different root layouts, and our paths will once again not be affected by the folder name used in parentheses. Conclusion In conclusion, Next.js route groups offer a powerful and flexible solution for organizing and managing routes in your Next.js applications. By grouping related routes together, you can improve code organization, enhance maintainability, and promote code reusability. Route groups allow for the use of shared layout components, and the customization of root layouts for different segments of pages. With Next.js route groups, you can streamline your development process, create a more intuitive routing structure, and ultimately deliver a better user experience....

Feb 7, 2024

6 mins

NextJSReact

End-to-end type-safety with JSON Schema

End-to-end type-safety with JSON Schema I recently wrote an introduction to JSON Schema post. If you’re unfamiliar with it, check out the post, but TLDR: It’s a schema specification that can be used to define the input and output data for your JSON API. In my post, I highlight many fantastic benefits you can reap from defining schemas for your JSON API. One of the more interesting things you can achieve with your schemas is end-to-end type safety from your backend API to your client application(s). In this post, we will explore how this can be accomplished slightly deeper. Overview The basic idea of what we want to achieve is: * a JSON API server that validates input and output data using JSON Schema * The JSON Schema definitions that our API uses transformed into TypeScript types With those pieces in place, we can achieve type safety on our API server and the consuming client application. The server side is pretty straightforward if you’re using a server like Fastify with already enabled JSON Schema support. This post will focus on the concepts more than the actual implementation details though. Here’s a simple diagram illustrating the high-level concept: We can share the schema and type declaration between the client and server. In that case, we can make a request to an endpoint where we know its type and schema, and assuming the server validates the data against the schema before sending it back to the client, our client can be confident about the type of the response data. Marrying JSON Schema and TypeScript There are a couple of different ways to accomplish this: * Generating types from schema definitions using code generation tools * Creating TypeBox definitions that can infer TypeScript types and be compiled to JSON Schema I recommend considering both and figuring out which would better fit your application and workflows. Like anything else, each has its own set of trade-offs. In my experience, I’ve found TypeBox to be the most compelling if you want to go deep with this pattern. Code generation A couple of different packages are available for generating TS types from JSON Schema definitions. * https://github.com/bcherny/json-schema-to-typescript * https://github.com/vega/ts-json-schema-generator They are CLI tools that you can provide a glob path to where your schema files are located and will generate TS declaration files to a specified output path. You can set up an npm hook or a similar type of script that will generate types for your development environment. TypeBox TypeBox is a JSON Schema type builder. With this approach, instead of json files, we define schemas in code using the TypeBox API. The TypeBox definitions infer to TypeScript types directly, which eliminates the code generation step described above. Here’s a simple example from the documentation of a JSON Schema definition declared with TypeBox: ` This can then be inferred as a TypeScript type: ` Aside from schemas and types, TypeBox can do a lot more to help us on our type-safety journey. We will explore it a bit more in upcoming sections. Sharing schemas between client and server applications Sharing our JSON Schema between our server and client app is the main requirement for end-to-end type-safety. There are a couple of different ways to accomplish this, but the simplest would be to set up our codebase as a monorepo that contains both the server and client app. Some popular options for TypeScript monorepos are: PNPM, Turborepo, and NX. If a monorepo is not an option, you can publish your schema and types as a package that can be installed in both projects. However, this setup would require a lot more maintenance work. Ultimately, as long as you can import your schemas and types from the client and server app, you are in good shape. Server-to-client validation and type-safety For the sake of simplicity, let's focus on data flowing from the server to the client for now. Generally speaking, the concepts also apply in reverse, as long as your JSON API server validates your inputs and outputs. We’ll look at the most basic version of having strongly typed data on the client from a request to our server. Type-safe client requests In our server application, if we validate the /users endpoint with a shared schema - on the client side, when we make the request to the endpoint, we know that the response data is validated using the user schema. As long as we are confident of this fact, we can use the generated type from that schema as the return type on our client fetch call. Here’s some pseudocode: ` Our server endpoint would look something like this: ` You could get creative and build out a map that defines all of your endpoints, their metadata, and schemas, and use the map to define your server endpoints and create an API client. Transforming data over the wire Everything looks stellar, but we can still take our efforts a bit further. To this point, we are still limited to serialized JSON data. If we have a created_at field (number or ISO string) tied to our user, and we want it to be a Date object when we get a hold of it on the client side - additional work and consideration are required. There are some different strategies out there for deserializing JSON data. The great thing about having shared schemas between our client and server is that we can encode our type information in the schema without sending additional metadata from our server to the client. Using format to declare type data In my initial JSON Schema blog post, I touched on the format field of the specification. In our schema, if the actual type of our date is a string in ISO8601 format, we can declare our format to be "date-time". We can use this information on the client to transform the field into a proper Date object. ` Transforming serialized JSON Data This can be a little bit tricky; again, there are many ways to accomplish it. To demonstrate the concept, we’ll use TypeBox to define our schemas as discussed above. TypeBox provides a Transform type that you can use to declare, encode, and decode methods for your schema definition. ` It even provides helpers to statically generate the decoded and encoded types for your schema ` If you declare your decode and encode functions for your schemas, you can then use the TypeBox API to handle decoding the serialized values returned from your JSON API. Here’s what the concept looks like in practice fetching a user from our API: ` Nice. You could use a validation library like Zod to achieve a similar result but here we aren’t actually doing any validation on our client side. That happened on the server. We just know the types based on the schema since both ends share them. On the client, we are just transforming our serialized JSON into what we want it to be in our client application. Summary There are a lot of pieces in play to accomplish end-to-end type safety. With the help of JSON Schema and TypeBox though, it feels like light work for a semi-roll-your-own type of solution. Another great thing about it is that it’s flexible and based on pretty core concepts like a JSON API paired with a TypeScript-based client application. The number of benefits that you can reap from defining JSON Schemas for your APIs is really great. If you’re like me and wanna keep it simple by avoiding GraphQL or other similar tools, this is a great approach....

Apr 17, 2024

6 mins

JSONTypeScript

How to Go from Software Engineer to AI Engineer with Shawn Wang

Shawn Wang discusses AI engineering’s potential impact on the software development labor market and developer experience. With the rise of artificial intelligence technologies, there is an increasing demand for professionals who can bridge the gap between AI and software engineering, and engineers are looking around for guidance on how to best learn AI. Shawn emphasizes the importance of acquiring core knowledge and skills in AI engineering, highlighting the need for a systematic approach to education and development. He envisions a future where AI engineering becomes a recognized profession, with specialized training programs and certifications. He further talks about mental models for approaching AI literacy, and skill building. Shawn also discusses the use of advanced AI technology in software development. He showcases tools like GPT Vision, which can automate tasks and generate code efficiently. While acknowledging the potential of AI in enhancing productivity, Shawn emphasizes the need to leverage AI tools to augment human capabilities rather than replace them. Download this episode here....

Apr 17, 2024

1 min

Artificial IntelligenceEngineering Leadership

React: React Fiber, React Gamekit, Serverless Architecture, and React Loadable

React + Serverless Architecture

React Music, React Gamekit, and Spectacle

React, React Loadable, and the React Community

React Fiber and Web Assembly

Conclusion

You might also like

CSS Hooks: A new way to style your React apps

Next.js Route Groups

End-to-end type-safety with JSON Schema

How to Go from Software Engineer to AI Engineer with Shawn Wang

You might also like

CSS Hooks: A new way to style your React apps

Next.js Route Groups

End-to-end type-safety with JSON Schema

How to Go from Software Engineer to AI Engineer with Shawn Wang