Choosing the right ReactJS library can be a tricky issue. You need something that will work with your setup and not mess up your hard work. With its flexibility and relative ease of use, ReactJS is a godsend for many coders – but how do you decide which one to use?

What is ReactJS

ReactJS is a JavaScript library that helps in creating graphic user interfaces. Useful in single-page development and app development, it can help tremendously if you have plenty of changing data that would require manual changing in multiple places. Using the right ReactJS library can save you a ton of time, as it updates all the data immediately.

Redux

Redux is one of the simple, easy-to-learn state containers for apps built with JavaScript. It’s lightweight, as it only takes up 2KB, and its simplicity makes is the perfect choice for when you have plenty of changing data. Dan Abramov, Redux’s creator, provides free video courses on it, so it can be a great choice for beginners that want to advance their app building. Its interface is very minimal – but it still maintains very predictable behaviour. Take a little time to learn about Redux, though – it might turn out you don’t need it, but it can very well save you a lot of time and effort.

React Testing Library

Here’s an issue you may face – you want your tests to run predictably and safely, but your implementation details suddenly get taken into account, making the tests unreliable. After all, you don’t want to test anything else than functionality. Thankfully, there’s a simple solution to that – the React Testing Library. With its help, you can run reliable tests that closely resemble the actual use of your application. With little issues, its light weight and reliability, it’s great for creating your custom tests and getting proper results back. Keep in mind, though, that you may run into compatibility issues with DOM 16.8. They’re not game breaking but can be irritating. Update to DOM 16.9 – and if you can’t, there’s a simple snippet of code available that will go around that issue.

Formik

If you’re annoyed by the wordy, lengthy forms of React – and you feel like some of the helpers you installed influence the performance too much – you could try Formik. Again, there’s a theme to our choices. Formik is not heavy at all, and it helps you deal with some of the most aggravating parts of app building: moving values in form states (in and out), error messages and validation and dealing with form submission. Since Formik gets it all in one place, it makes all of the issues associated with these simple and easy.

styled-components

It can be a bit tricky to get the final shine on your app – the devil is in the details, after all. styled-components can help you with that. With it, you can build varied components for your app interface with ease, as it uses the CSS functions you know and love. When you select and set your components, such as buttons, they are all functional and bundled together – so when you decide to go from black background to navy blue, for example, you can easily edit all the components as well. Never let your app retain that one button somewhere that always slips your mind.

hooks

Let’s say you wish for a bit of code to run before and after the save method of your object. Do you feel like putting those functions directly into the code is a bit much? Well, it very well might be a bit much. This will make them tied together more tightly than it’s necessary – the answer to that is hooks, a library that lets you define actions you want to happen before and after some methods. It’s simple and effective, letting you create multiple pres and posts to run as a chain of actions – and, as an added bonus, it can help you create actions that will stop the method from running if there’s an error in the chain. No more broken saves!

All in all, it’s up to you which library you choose to use, if any at all. But unless you like to work harder for a result and not give in to stuff that makes life easier, we can really recommend you have a look at the five above. Give them a go, test them and see if – or even, how – they can make your life easy.