Top 14 Libraries for Any React App
The Ultimate React Arsenal
There are so many React libraries out there, and picking the right one can be tough. In this article, I’ve put together a list of my favorite and most reliable libraries to help you make the best choice for your project.
Please, notice that it’s my subjective top based on experience. I can miss something and there might be other great libraries out there. So, feel free to leave comments and share your thoughts.
Table of Contents
Interaction with API
In today’s world, a frontend application is rarely complete without a connection to a backend. This makes the choice of the right library for API interactions incredibly important.
Mainly, there are two popular types of APIs you will encounter: Typical RESTful API and GraphQL. And it’s not hard to guess that their tooling will differ.
For RESTful API
For REST, React-Query stands out as a leader with its powerful caching features and automated background updates. It’s one of the most flexible and complete solutions you can find right now. Let’s look at the list of its main features:
- Cache management is out of the box and is extremely easy and pleasant.
- Automatic data revalidation in the background.
- Combining several requests for the same data into just one request.
- Different optimizations like pagination and lazy loading.
- Optimistic UI Updates.
For GraphQL API
Apollo Client is a state management library that makes interactions with GraphQL painless and efficient. It drastically simplifies building complex, data-driven applications.
It offers almost the same functionality as React Query does but for GraphQL. Also, it has some unique features like:
- Real-time data support with GraphQL subscriptions.
- Client state management.
- Different GraphQL-specific optimizations.
In React applications, we are constantly doing operations with the state. Most of the bugs occur because of poor state management, so it’s important to choose the right strategy right away.
Roughly speaking, there are two types of states: global and local. Global is accessible from every part of the app and local only within certain components, widgets, or pages.
For Global State
There are a lot of different state managers in front-end development. Every time you blink a new state management is being open-sourced. But the one that works for me is MobX.
Some people don’t like it because a lot of “magic” happens behind the scenes out of your control. But for me, that is a feature, not a bug. I like to concentrate on the product itself and don’t spend too much time on technical details. In my opinion, its main advantages are:
- Simplicity as MobX has a beautiful and intuitive API.
- Minimal boilerplate, you just write less code in comparison to solutions like Redux.
- Advanced reactivity system automatically tracks changes to the state and updates only affected components.
For Local State
Managing the local state is not a big challenge. Most of the time you can use build-in React hooks such as useState, useContext, and useReducer.
However, in some cases, you might need React Context and useContext hook. When dealing with it you should keep two things in mind: the possibility of excessive rerenders and scalability issues.
If you want to keep these problems out of your scope and concentrate more on business logic — use-context-selector is your choice. You’ll get significant performance optimizations and a fine-grained approach to React Context.
UI-kit
UI-kit is the backbone of any frontend application, it must be robust, reusable, and fully customized for the project needs. It’s very important to think carefully and implement a good technical solution as it will influence the entire project.
I’ve been building custom ui-kits for a long time and there are always two types of situations: when you have the time to make things perfect or when you don’t.
When You Have Time
In this case, you want to have a fully customized solution, an exact design match, and high-quality components. But, creating everything from scratch according to the best practices can be quite challenging.
I recommend choosing a “headless UI” package on which you can build upon. These types of packages don’t contain any styles and are super flexible and customizable. Moreover, they include all the necessary things for cross-browser compatibility and accessibility.
The most favorite ones of mine are:
- React-Aria, especially hook API
- Headless UI
- Radix UI
When You Don’t Have Time
Let’s be honest, most of the time we don’t have time) So we must be ready to sacrifice the perfect design match for the sake of speed.
For this problem, we have a wide range of different comprehensive design systems. They won’t give you full freedom and make you spend some time configuring them. But as a result, you’ll save a ton of time.
So, my top is:
Styling
Regarding styling in React, the choice often comes down to personal preferences. I prefer either Styled Components or standard SCSS modules.
Styled Components are good in scenarios where your styles are closely tied to your JS. This library allows writing CSS within JavaScript, removing the gap between technologies and simplifying dynamic styling. However, sometimes Styled Components can confuse new developers unfamiliar with the technology.
SCSS modules offer a more traditional approach, keeping styles separate from JavaScript logic. This technology has many features to make it more comfortable, such as variables, mixing, nesting, and better syntax overall. But in comparison to Styled Components, SCSS might lack some advanced capabilities, especially, when it comes to dynamic styles.
Forms and Validation
A lot of people underestimate the importance of proper form handling and that’s a mistake. It’s not just about capturing user input, it’s about providing a seamless and user-friendly experience.
There are numerous libraries available, but in my opinion, there are two main competitors: Formik and React Hook Form.
Even though both libraries are quite similar in functionality and developer experience they can significantly differ in performance. Let me explain this.
RHF uses uncontrolled components and doesn’t control the input’s state. It relies on the native behavior of HTML form elements and this minimizes the number of re-renders. This factor can play a crucial role in large and complex forms.
Formiks uses controlled components and manages the form state entirely. It updates the state with every input change that causes more frequent re-renders. If you have a large form or complex validation be careful with it.
I hope you found this article useful. If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave comments. Your feedback helps me to become better.
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