Crafting Stunning Layouts and Dashboards in React: A Comprehensive Guide
Frontend development requires the creation of visually appealing and user-friendly layouts, especially for data-intensive applications like dashboards. This comprehensive guide explores various techniques and best practices to design stunning layouts and dashboards using React. Whether you are a seasoned developer or a beginner, this article equips you with the knowledge to craft responsive and captivating interfaces that captivate your audience.
Understanding Your File Structure
Before delving into layout creation, it’s essential to grasp your file structure. Organize your layouts and pages into separate folders, such as shared layouts, private layouts, and dashboard layouts. This approach grants you more control over component access through imports. Here’s an example of a recommended file structure:
From the image above, we can see that there’s a layout folder containing the Dashboard Layout and the Authentication Layout. You can always go ahead to create sub folders and have your components inside them. This will enable you have more control on how you access these components via your imports.
Similarly, it is recommended to also separate your Pages into subfolders holding your shared pages (Generally accessible pages), and your private pages (Protected pages) as seen above.
Structuring the Dashboard Layout
For the purpose of this article, we’ll focus on the dashboard layout. Typically, a dashboard consists of a top navigation bar displaying notifications, messages, and user avatars, along with a sidebar for navigation and routing. Below is an image representing the dashboard layout (styled using styled components):
The dashboard sidebar remains fixed on the side with the help of the “Container” styled component set to flex. The “Main” component includes the top navigation bar and accepts React node children to be rendered below the navbar. It’s made scrollable with the overflow-y: scroll property set.
Designing Your Routes
While there are various ways to design routes, one effective approach is to store all routes in an array, along with their corresponding components. This enables easy mapping and eliminates the need for repetitive code. Consider the following code snippet:
By mapping through each route and accessing its path and component, you can effortlessly incorporate the routes as children inside the layout. With this structure, editing, debugging, and management become easier, cleaner, and more efficient, especially with the introduction of code splitting. The top and side navigation bars remain constant while the routes change within the layout structure.
Enhancing Data Fetching with React Query and Axios:
To enhance the user experience in data fetching, consider using React Query and Axios. These powerful tools enable efficient data management and seamless interaction with APIs, leading to a smoother user experience.
You can read on that Here.
Conclusion:
Crafting visually appealing and intuitive layouts is crucial in frontend development, particularly for data-intensive applications like dashboards. By following the techniques and best practices outlined in this guide, you can design stunning layouts and dashboards using React. Embrace efficient file structuring, leverage the power of React Query and Axios for data fetching, and continue to be awesome in your frontend endeavors!
