How react Works

Gyana Ranjan
2 min readMar 28, 2024

React is a popular JavaScript library for building user interfaces. Here’s a simplified breakdown of how it works:

Components:

  • React breaks down complex UIs into smaller, reusable pieces called components.
  • Each component has its own logic and determines how a specific part of the UI looks and behaves.
  • This modular approach makes code easier to understand, maintain, and reuse.

Virtual DOM:

  • React maintains an in-memory representation of the real DOM (Document Object Model) called the virtual DOM.
  • The virtual DOM is essentially a lightweight JavaScript object mirroring the structure of the actual DOM.
  • When a component’s state or props (arguments passed to a component) change, React updates the virtual DOM efficiently.

Reconciliation:

  • Whenever there’s a change, React compares the new virtual DOM with the previous one using a diffing algorithm.
  • This algorithm identifies the minimal changes needed to update the real DOM efficiently.
  • Only the necessary parts of the DOM are updated, resulting in faster and smoother UI updates.

Rendering:

  • Based on the diffing results, React updates the real DOM to reflect the changes in the virtual DOM.
  • This minimizes DOM manipulation, leading to better performance and responsiveness.

JSX (Optional):

  • JSX (JavaScript XML) is a syntax extension that allows you to write HTML-like structures within your JavaScript code.
  • It improves readability and makes it easier to visualize the UI structure within your components.
  • While JSX is popular, it’s not mandatory for using React. You can write components purely in JavaScript.

In essence, React uses components, virtual DOM, and reconciliation to efficiently manage and update UI components, leading to performant and dynamic web applications.

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