React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces.
- Just the UI: Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project.
- Virtual DOM: React uses a virtual DOM diff implementation for ultra-high performance. It can also render on the server using Node.js — no heavy browser DOM required.
- Data flow: React implements one-way reactive data flow which reduces boilerplate and is easier to reason about than traditional data binding.
Learn how to use React in your own project.
If you're looking for jeffbski's React.js project, it's now in npm as reactjs rather than react.
We have several examples on the website. Here is the first one to get you started:
/** @jsx React.DOM */
var HelloMessage = React.createClass({
render: function() {
return <div>Hello {this.props.name}</div>;
}
});
React.renderComponent(
<HelloMessage name="John" />,
document.getElementById('container')
);This example will render "Hello John" into a container on the page.
You'll notice that we used an HTML-like syntax; we call it JSX. JSX is not required to use React, but it makes code more readable, and writing it feels like writing HTML. A simple transform is included with React that allows converting JSX into native JavaScript for browsers to digest.
The fastest way to get started is to serve JavaScript from the CDN (also available on CDNJS):
<!-- The core React library -->
<script src="http://fb.me/react-0.8.0.js"></script>
<!-- In-browser JSX transformer, remove when pre-compiling JSX. -->
<script src="http://fb.me/JSXTransformer-0.8.0.js"></script>We've also built a starter kit which might be useful if this is your first time using React. It includes a webpage with an example of using React with live code.
If you'd like to use bower, it's as easy as:
bower install --save reactThe main purpose of this repository is to continue to evolve React core, making it faster and easier to use. If you're interested in helping with that, then keep reading. If you're not interested in helping right now that's ok too. :) Any feedback you have about using React would be greatly appreciated.
The process to build react.js is built entirely on top of node.js, using many libraries you may already be familiar with.
- You have
nodeinstalled at v0.10.0+ (it might work at lower versions, we just haven't tested). - You are familiar with
npmand know whether or not you need to usesudowhen installing packages globally. - You are familiar with
git.