React from Scratch
React from Scratch
A friendly guide for absolute beginners
About the Book
This book is my answer to the question: how to teach React to a complete beginner, in as little time as possible?
Need to learn the basics quickly? This is your book.
About the Author
Table of Contents
-
Chapter 0: Before we start
- 0.1 Disclaimer
- 0.2 Assumptions: Things to have before we start
-
Chapter 1: Building the simplest possible React app
- 1.0 What is React?
- 1.1 Install React Developer Tools in your Browser
- 1.2 Let’s build the simplest possible React app
- 1.3 Run our default React app and examine it in the browser
- 1.4 Inspecting the app using React Developer Tools
-
1.5 What happens when we run the
npx create-react-app <appName>? - 1.6 Understanding our default React app’s folder and file structure
-
1.7 Inspecting the contents of
package.json - 1.8 Altering the default app
-
Chapter 2: Serving React from a CDN and running it without a build step
- 2.1 Re-building the simplest app without a build step using Codepen.io
- 2.2 Load another node into another div
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2.3 Challenge: Render three more
h2headings - 2.4 Adding HTML attributes using React.createElement
- 2.5 What happened to the DOM?
- 2.6 Some Conclusions
- 2.7 Optimizing our simplest example’s code, the React way: introducing JSX
- 2.9 Exercise: Find at least one interesting React Codepen
- 2.10 Making our simplest app a bit more dynamic, using JSX
-
Chapter 3: Build React Apps Locally Without a Build Step
- 3.1 Build React Apps Locally Without a Build Step, pt 1 (no HTML attributes)
- 3.2 Build React Apps Locally Without a Build Step, pt 2 (with HTML attributes)
- 3.3 Build React Apps Locally Without a Build Step, pt 3 (nested HTML elements)
- 3.4 Build React Apps Locally Without a Build Step, pt 4 (improved nested HTML code)
-
Chapter 4: What is JSX?
- 4.1 Adding HTML-like code as a parameter to the root.render() call
- 4.2 Using the ternary operator in JSX
- 4.3 Using variables in JSX
- 4.4 Why does JSX look like HTML?
-
Chapter 5: Components and props
- 5.1 The simplest possible app using a component
-
5.1 Is it
renderorreturn? - 5.2 You must have a single wrapping element when returning JSX
- 5.3 Props in React
- 5.4 The hierarchy of React components
- 5.5 Transpiling JSX using Babel to inspect the props object
- 5.6 The list of completed learning objectives
-
Chapter 6: Assets in React
- 6.1 Working with images
- 6.2 Working with JSON
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Chapter 7: JSX and styling
- 7.1 How to include CSS in plain HTML?
- 7.2 Some of the possible ways to style components in React
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7.3 Importing styles using the
linkelement - 7.4 Inline styles using object literals
- 7.5 Inline styles using variables
- 7.6 Composable styles using the spread operator
- 7.7 Third-party styling libraries
-
Chapter 8, Build a Static Bootstrap Layout
- 8.1 Prototyping our website layout’s components
- 8.2 Adding the Bootstrap navbar
- 8.3 Adding Bootstrap’s CSS
- 8.4 Extracting MainMenu component and importing it into App.js
- 8.5 Adding another component (the Jumbotron)
- 8.6 Adding the Card component and repeating it multiple times
- 8.7 Working with the children prop
- 8.8 Using the children prop in the CardsWrapper component
- 8.9 Adding the footer component
-
Chapter 9: Looping over data (repeating cards)
- 9.1 The starting app for Chapter 9 (with non-repeating cards)
- 9.2 Extracting data to a separate object
- 9.3 Looping over JSON data
- 9.4 Improving readability of the passed-in data with props
-
9.4.1 Bonus: Calling a single prop in the rendered Car component in
App.js - 9.4.2 Bonus 2: Cleaning up code using object destructuring
- 9.4.3 Bonus 3: Taking object destructuring one step further (destructuring nested objects)
-
Chapter 10: The very basics of data and events in React
- 10.1 Data in React
- 10.2 Working with state data in a React component
- 10.3 Updating the state data in a React component using events
- 10.4 Exercise
-
Chapter 11: Conditional rendering
- 11.1 Product component example app
- 11.2 Using if-else in a component to render it conditionally
- 11.3 Rendering classNames conditionally using ternary operators
- 11.4 Simplifying rendering classNames conditionally using ternary operators
- 11.5 When rendering a list of items, skipping an item if a prop value is an empty string
- 11.6 Conditionally returning a different string than the one passed in from a prop
- 11.7 Conditionally rendering different components
- 11.8 Extracting the return values as variables
- 11.9 Extracting the return values as variables, and rendering them using the ternary operator
-
11.10 Conditionally rendering components using the logical AND operator (the
&&operator)
-
Chapter 12: Conclusion
- An overview of concepts learned and apps built
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