React is now one of the most popular JavaScript frameworks for developers to create highly functional large-scale applications. It has a component-based architecture and a powerful ecosystem that supports the developers in creating proficient applications.
But, as the ReactJS apps grow in terms of complexities, it becomes important for you to adopt certain practices, ensuring maintainability, scalability, and high performance. This is something that the ReactJS developers must be prepared for right from the beginning.
Therefore, while commencing with the ReactJS projects, it is always advised to have some tailored guidelines for the team, to work on making the code scalable. Let’s dive deeper into the concept of scalable and maintainable ReactJS development and determine optimal practices to achieve it.
What are the Benefits of Developing Scalable, Maintainable, and Performant ReactJS Applications?
Before giving you insights into the best practices you can adopt for making your ReactJS app scalable, here are some of the benefits that explain why developers or clients consider it in the first place:
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Enhanced UX
When you have performant and scalable applications, it will ensure the end-users are getting responsive UX. These apps will load quickly and respond to user interactions more accurately. Moreover, such apps being scalable will be able to handle increased amounts of data without degrading the performance.
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Efficient Utilization of Resources
The scalable ReactJS apps utilize the system resources effectively, which reduces the infrastructure cost and improves the responsiveness factor. All the network requests get optimized, and redundancy in computations is also reduced.
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Maintainability and Extensibility is Easy
The scalable ReactJS applications are designed with the scope of extensibility and maintainability in mind. React JS development with dedicated guidelines would ensure that the app gets a modular architecture alongside reusable components. Thus, adding new functionalities or modifying the existing Reactjs new features will be easier.
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Development for the Future
When you make your ReactJS applications scalable, you can be assured they will handle user demands in the long run, supporting your future growth. It means the apps will have the feasibility to adapt to increasing requirements and will be able to integrate new technologies. This will support increased user bases without hampering quality.
What are the Best Practices for Building Scalable and Maintainable ReactJS Applications?
To help you ace your React JS development project, here are some of the best practices you must adopt to build scalable, maintainable, and performant applications:
1. Attain Componentization
Component-based architecture is the USP of ReactJS. The applications built over this framework use components as their building blocks. They make it easy for the developers to create composable or reusable UI functions in the application.
For ensuring scalability, it is quite crucial for you to design those components by considering the reusability factors. It means the components should be all focused, independent, and small. All of it should be easily customizable or extendable.
Remember, you should not create the component library or seek componentization only at the time when your project reaches larger proportions. Instead, you can share the components continuously, throughout the development phase, right from the start.
Every time a new component is used or built, you can use the tool, Bit for tracking and sharing it with the component collection of your team. It will be stored on your own server or on Bit.dev.
The independent components are quite easy to maintain. And, when the same components are documented and shared, they are even easier to reuse. The component library is not just for the UI components but also for storing the logic within.
2. File Organization is Very Crucial
It is very important for you to have an organized structure for your folders or files. This is a crucial ask for ensuring clarity on your project hierarchy. Navigating through the project will be easier at the time of making scalable developments.
With the create-react app, there’s a possible way of organizing those app files. Every time there’s a change in the products, there will be a lot of tasks involved, such as organizing components and renaming files. These changes are important to ensure everything within the app stays in alignment with the upgraded version.
Some of the things to keep your file and folder organized during the ReactJS app development include:
- Add an ‘asset’ folder for storing the images, style sheet, font files, and others.
- Create a ‘layout’ folder, which will consist of the layouts used for the entire project, such as footer, header, and others.
- Add a ‘helper’ folder for storing functionalities.
- Make a ‘route’ folder for organizing the routes.
- Add the ‘component’ folder, which will store all your UI components used in the application, such as model, inputs, loader, and button.
3. Adopt the Use of Right Tools for Implementing Scalability
When seeking React JS development, you might not feel the necessity of several tools during the initial phase. But, when it is about scaling the application in the long run, a large codebase can be expected. In such cases, you might have to adopt some innovative tools to help you scale the app’s functionalities without deteriorating performance.
Some of the tools that you can count on are:
- ESLint and Prettier tools are required to give you a consistent coding pattern among the team members. Following that, it will reduce the possibility of syntax errors. You can consider including the utility libraries such as date-fns, react-hook-form, and React Router.
- Use Bit or Github for sharing and managing your components independently. It means you can run renders and tests for every component individually in isolation. Thus, it will guarantee easy maintainability and reusability of the components later in the future.
- Instead of using Create React App, you can prefer using Next.js to get started with your project. It will play a part in making your app scalable.
Bottom Line
With these best practices, you must remember that building a ReactJS application with scalability and maintainability in mind is pretty complex. You will have to think of both ReactJS developers and the end-consumers of the app to make the best decision.
Using the right approach with the use of adequate methods and tools, scaling the ReactJS project will be a piece of cake! You can always get in touch with ReactJS experts to get more ideas on how to secure hassle-free growth sustainability for your dedicated applications!
