Why is ReactJS the Best fit for your Social Networking App?
Introduction
We are living in the digital era. With the advent of digitalization, you can see multiple apps being developed all over the place. Not even a single industry can be seen functioning without having an app of its own.
One can easily witness the presence of numerous frameworks for app development in the market right now. However, there’s one framework that has renowned itself as a top contender in the race. Reactjs it is!
ReactJS has dominated the app industry with its best-in-class features and performance. According to SimilarTech, over 334,251 websites are built using ReactJS and as per a survey by StackOverflow, ReactJS is at third place in the list of the most popular JavaScript libraries.
React.js is a popular choice in the social networking market too. In this blog, we will discuss and provide you with detailed information on reactjs for app development and why is it preferred for building feature-rich social networking apps?
Getting to know ReactJS
Developed by Facebook in 2011, React JS is a JavaScript library for creating dynamic and interactive user interfaces. Since ReactJS is highly efficient in handling the view layer of mobile and web app, it is a popular choice for front-end development.
In the year 2013, React was given an open-source status. Since its first release, React’s Github repository has generated 96,000 stars from web developers and has amassed a community of almost 1200 active contributors.
React can help you in making highly engaging websites. You will need a Reactjs developer for this. App owners these days are looking out for ways to make their website a success. What exactly is a successful website? A successful website is one that is able to engage more users.
A website without visitors is like a ship lost in the horizon!
In the words of Christopher Dayagdag, if your website is not alluring enough to attract users, then it surely fails to serve the desired purpose. But with React, web developers are able to build apps like never before. It is also helpful in creating social networking apps. Read further to know more about the use of react for social networking app development.
Major issues faced while building Single Page Applications
Single-page applications are preferred for making responsive websites these days. Do you know why is it so? Using Single Page Applications helps to improve the performance of the website. This is why various social networking applications are built using ReactJs. Facebook and Trello are the best examples of these.
But, the process of building single-page applications is not a piece of cake. While creating these, a number of challenges occur. Some of the major issues usually faced are,
Synchronization of Data with the User Interface takes too much time
While using a single page application, a lot of time is spent on keeping the data in -sync with the user interface. For example, if a user loads new content, is it required to explicitly clear out the search field? What are the elements that the user needs to keep on the page, and which are the ones that need to be destroyed? These problems never occurred while using the old model in which everything destroyed would be built back was an assumption.
Manipulating the DOM is REALLY slow
In a single page application, you need to execute a number of DOM operations. Manipulating the DOM is the primary way by which you will be able to react to the user actions and display the new content. Some of these DOM operations include adding children, removing subtrees, and many others like these. It takes a lot of time to accomplish these tasks.
Working with HTML templates can be difficult
Working with HTML templates while creating a single page application is a daunting task. You need to make use of the HTML templates for most of the time while displaying whatever you desire to. This problem can be easily overcome by using React. That’s why react js for app development is a popular choice among front-end developers.
Features that your App should have!
Social networking apps usage can be seen growing with each passing day. According to a survey, it is found that 70% of the total U.S. population has a profile on at least one of the social networking sites.
Most of the social networking applications are built as single-page applications. But, using single-page applications is a painstaking job. A lot of problems may occur while developing SPAs. Reactjs can surely help you to overcome these.
Creating a feature-packed application using SPA makes the process even more complex. Keeping a few things in mind while making an app can simplify the process. What features your app should have is one of these? So here we provide you with the key features of a Social Networking App. Let’s discuss these in detail.
- Like-Unlike Photos
You can like and unlike your friends photos on Instagram and Facebook. Do you ever think about how is it all happening? On a web application, such instant Likes/Unlikes are only possible with single-page applications. And React is the best framework for making uncomplicated single-page applications. And to make one for your business, you can hire react developers from a reputed app development company.
Uploading Photos and Videos
Uploading photos and videos is a must for your social networking application. While uploading a photo on a website, earlier a GIF animation was displayed to indicate that the photo is being uploaded. There was no other option available at that time to upload and ping the server simultaneously. But things have changed now. All thanks to ReactJS! Async Await in React made this possible. This is why large companies prefer to choose react for social networking app development.
Real-Time Chatting
You can create a real-time chat app using React with Node, Socket.io, and Express. Socket.IO is a JavaScript library that allows real-time, two-directional communication between web clients and servers. It has two parts which include,
1. Client-side library: It runs in the browser and can be integrated with React in a few lines of code.
2. Server-side library: It is a server-side library for Node.js. Socket.IO is event-driven.
How can Reactjs help you to overcome these difficulties?
ReactJS has changed the way applications are being developed these days. It has raised the expectations of the users from their web apps. They now wish apps with instant time and event-based responses. React can help you in meeting these expectations which is why React for social networking app development is a preferred choice among app developers.
Rapid Development
It is astonishing to see how Facebook and Instagram work persistently to bring new changes despite having a near-monopoly. Do you know why do they do this? It is because the demands of the users keep varying. The era of yearlong development cycles has now come to an end.
You need to introduce a new version of an app every month if you wish to outperform your competitors. Therefore, rapid development is what you need. React can surely render this with the help of its features. You can hire Reactjs developers to ensure an interactive app delivery on time.
Components rather than Templates
React offers one of the best components to develop single-page features. For instance, you wish to integrate the photo editing feature into your business application. The task would have become more complicated using templates. You would require to develop a custom web component to incorporate the features. But with React, you can use the React components to make things simpler and quicker.
Unparalleled Scalability
React along with Node offers the best-in-class scalability while developing social networking apps. This is rendered by the single-threaded and non-blocking architecture of Node.js. Node.js can take a number of requests in its event loop without slowing down. This is why, when matched with NodeJS, Reactjs for app development is the best fit for making social networking apps since a social networking app has to handle too many requests at the same time.
Better User-Experience
Using React helps to relieve your apps from DOM manipulations. This would make your business applications more responsive making it more user-friendly. Surely, this is one of the reasons to choose React for social networking app development.
Search Indexing
It is important that your social networking apps have an excellent presence on search engines such as Google and Bing. Search engines cannot index a JavaScript page. So it becomes blank for the Google crawlers. This can create a huge problem.
But React can surely resolve this too. ReactJS has first-class support for server-side rendering. Server-side rendering of JavaScript provides a pre-rendered HTML page which is ready-display to the browser. Google crawlers can crawl HTML like any other application thus ensuring that your page in being ranked on the search engine.
Bottomline!
By now, you would have understood why React is the best fit for developing social networking applications. With its virtual DOM and server-side rendering, this open-source JavaScript library is an ideal fit for your project. It makes the entire development task easier. Besides this, it is easy to test applications made using ReactJS which saves the expenses spent on the development process.
Moreover, React helps to create an attractive user interface. Rightly said by Louis XIV,
“Everything starts with the Customer”
Customer experience really matters. In fact, it is everything. So, the core of your strategy should always be the customer. Only a solid customer experience can help your business to grow.
