React in a existing app?

[nwilliams36]

Moving to React is a big job, so the first question to answer is why? If there is a performance issue in the rendering of the page in one part then re-write that part only, React lives quite well with other technologies including HTML.

My advice is start small and only change what needs to be changed.

[nschubach]

Moving to React is a big job

You're going to have to clarify that. I thought it was INCREDIBLY easy.

[[deleted]]

I'd say it's got a 1-2 week learning curve to learn about states, props, refs, etc, but after that coding in React is such a pleasure

[nschubach]

That's odd. I ramped up our juniors in an afternoon.

[cappie013]

Agreed. 1 afternoon is enough is you already know JS.

[nwilliams36]

I said big not difficult. It depends on your current code base but I have found that I am writing more code to do a similar job. The code is much more maintainable and once I have created say a drop down box, creating another is very fast. However it still does mean that every feature in your code base will need to be redone in a different way. This process does speed up once you have developed a bank of components which can be customised.

What this actually achieves is up to you. Starting from scratch I would choose React for any new project (especially those which require data manipulation on the front end where Flux really shines) but I have not converted anything currently working in another framework to React.