A Practical Introduction to React.js

Learn how to use React.js to build faster, more testable web applications with fewer bugs. With this O’Reilly video course, experienced JavaScript developers will learn development principles of the React.js framework by diving hands-first into working examples. You’ll learn how to build isomorphic web apps that run on both client and server for lightning-fast mobile load times.

Veteran web developer Mike Sugarbaker guides you through development of a shopping list component with React, and then shows you how to expand this in-page widget to a full app with server-API interaction. These principles might make you uncomfortable at first, but you’ll soon appreciate what React brings to the table.

• Set up a simple command-line workflow with JSX
• Learn React’s lifecycle for managing a component’s creation, re-rendering, and destruction
• Understand the details (and perils) of using React’s tools for giving components local state
• Interact with an API using Facebook’s Flux pattern
• Learn how to run React code on the server as well as the client
• See two methods for making the server-side app respond to different URLs
• Get a sneak preview of the React Native project for producing native iOS apps with JavaScript

Mike Sugarbaker, a professional web developer for 18 years, has been using JavaScript even longer. Currently, he’s a front-end developer at Idealist.org.