Chapter 4

Getting Started with React

To use React in your newly created project, load two React scripts from an external website called unpkg.com:

react is the core React library.
react-dom provides DOM-specific methods that enable you to use React with the DOM.

index.html

<html>
  <body>
    <div id="app"></div>
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/react@18/umd/react.development.js"></script>
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/react-dom@18/umd/react-dom.development.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      const app = document.getElementById('app');
      const header = document.createElement('h1');
      const text = 'Develop. Preview. Ship.';
      const headerContent = document.createTextNode(text);
      header.appendChild(headerContent);
      app.appendChild(header);
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

Instead of directly manipulating the DOM with plain JavaScript, remove the DOM methods that you had added previously, and add the ReactDOM.createRoot() method to target a specific DOM element and create a root to display your React Components in. Then, add the root.render() method to render your React code to the DOM.

This will tell React to render our <h1> title inside our #app element.

index.html

<html>
  <body>
    <div id="app"></div>
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/react@18/umd/react.development.js"></script>
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/react-dom@18/umd/react-dom.development.js"></script>
    <script>
      const app = document.getElementById('app');
      const root = ReactDOM.createRoot(app);
      root.render(<h1>Develop. Preview. Ship.</h1>);
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

If you try to run this code in the browser, you will get a syntax error:

Terminal

Uncaught SyntaxError: expected expression, got '<'

This is because <h1>...</h1> is not valid Javascript. This piece of code is JSX.

What is JSX?

JSX is a syntax extension for JavaScript that allows you to describe your UI in a familiar HTML-like syntax. The nice thing about JSX is that apart from following three JSX rules, you don't need to learn any new symbols or syntax outside of HTML and JavaScript.

But browsers don't understand JSX out of the box, so you'll need a JavaScript compiler, such as a Babel, to transform your JSX code into regular JavaScript.

Adding Babel to your project

To add Babel to your project, copy and paste the following script in your index.html file:

index.html

<script src="https://unpkg.com/@babel/standalone/babel.min.js"></script>

In addition, you will need to inform Babel what code to transform by changing the script type to type=text/jsx.

index.html

<html>
  <body>
    <div id="app"></div>
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/react@18/umd/react.development.js"></script>
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/react-dom@18/umd/react-dom.development.js"></script>
    <!-- Babel Script -->
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/@babel/standalone/babel.min.js"></script>
    <script type="text/jsx">
      const domNode = document.getElementById('app');
      const root = ReactDOM.createRoot(domNode);
      root.render(<h1>Develop. Preview. Ship.</h1>);
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

To confirm it's working correctly, open your HTML file in the browser.

Comparing the declarative React code you just wrote:

index.html

<script type="text/jsx">
  const domNode = document.getElementById("app")
  const root = ReactDOM.createRoot(domNode);
  root.render(<h1>Develop. Preview. Ship.</h1>);
</script>

to the imperative JavaScript code you wrote in the previous section:

index.html

<script type="text/javascript">
  const app = document.getElementById('app');
  const header = document.createElement('h1');
  const text = 'Develop. Preview. Ship.';
  const headerContent = document.createTextNode(text);
  header.appendChild(headerContent);
  app.appendChild(header);
</script>

You can start to see how using React enables you to cut down a lot of repetitive code.

And this is exactly what React does, it's a library that contains reusable snippets of code that perform tasks on your behalf - in this case, updating the UI.

Additional Resources:

You don't need to know exactly how React updates the UI to start using it, but if you'd like to learn more, here are some additional resources:

UI trees

Writing markup with JSX

react-dom/server sections in the React Documentation.

Essential JavaScript for React

While you can learn JavaScript and React at the same time, being familiar with JavaScript can make the process of learning React easier.

In the next sections, you will be introduced to some core concepts of React from a JavaScript perspective. Here's a summary of the JavaScript topics that will be mentioned:

While this course does not dive into JavaScript, it's good practice to stay up to date with the latest versions of JavaScript. But if you don't feel proficient in JavaScript yet, don't let this hinder you from starting to build with React!

Getting Started with React

What is JSX?

Adding Babel to your project

Essential JavaScript for React

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