Using React in Visual Studio Code

React is a popular JavaScript library developed by Facebook for building web application user interfaces. The Visual Studio Code editor supports React.js IntelliSense and code navigation out of the box.

Welcome to React

We’ll be using the create-react-app generator for this tutorial. To install and use the generator as well as run the React application server, you’ll need Node.js JavaScript runtime and npm (Node.js package manager) installed. npm is included with Node.js which you can download and install from Node.js downloads.

Tip: To test that you have Node.js and npm correctly installed on your machine, you can type node --version and npm --version in a terminal or command prompt.

To install the create-react-app generator, in a terminal or command prompt type:

npm install -g create-react-app

This may take a few minutes to install. You can now create a new React application by typing:

create-react-app my-app

where my-app is the name of the folder for your application. This may take a few minutes to create the React application and install its dependencies.

Let’s quickly run our React application by navigating to the new folder and typing npm start to start the web server and open the application in a browser:

cd my-app
npm start

You should see the React logo and a link to “Learn React” on http://localhost:3000 in your browser. We’ll leave the web server running while we look at the application with VS Code.

To open your React application in VS Code, open another terminal or command prompt window, navigate to the my-app folder and type code .:

cd my-app
code .

Markdown preview

In the File Explorer, one file you’ll see is the application README.md Markdown file. This has lots of great information about the application and React in general. A nice way to review the README is by using the VS Code Markdown Preview. You can open the preview in either the current editor group (Markdown: Open Preview Ctrl+Shift+V) or in a new editor group to the side (Markdown: Open Preview to the Side Ctrl+K V). You’ll get nice formatting, hyperlink navigation to headers, and syntax highlighting in code blocks.

Syntax highlighting and bracket matching

Now expand the src folder and select the index.js file. You’ll notice that VS Code has syntax highlighting for the various source code elements and, if you put the cursor on a parenthesis, the matching bracket is also selected.

IntelliSense

As you start typing in index.js, you’ll see smart suggestions or completions.

After you select a suggestion and type ., you see the types and methods on the object through IntelliSense.

VS Code uses the TypeScript language service for its JavaScript code intelligence and it has a feature called Automatic Type Acquisition (ATA). ATA pulls down the npm Type Declaration files (*.d.ts) for the npm modules referenced in the package.json.

If you select a method, you’ll also get parameter help:

Go to Definition, Peek definition

Through the TypeScript language service, VS Code can also provide type definition information in the editor through Go to Definition (F12) or Peek Definition (Alt+F12). Put the cursor over the App, right click and select Peek Definition. A Peek window will open showing the App definition from App.js.

Press Escape to close the Peek window.

Hello World!

Let’s update the sample application to “Hello World!”. Add the link to declare a new H1 header and replace the <App /> tag in ReactDOM.render with element.

import React from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';
import App from './App';
import * as serviceWorker from './serviceWorker';
import './index.css';

var element = React.createElement('h1', { className: 'greeting' }, 'Hello, world!');
ReactDOM.render(element, document.getElementById('root'));
serviceWorker.unregister();

Once you save the index.js file, the running instance of the server will update the web page and you’ll see “Hello World!”.

Tip: VS Code supports Auto Save, which by default saves your files after a delay. Check the Auto Save option in the File menu to turn on Auto Save or directly configure the files.autoSave user setting.

Debugging React

To debug the client side React code, we’ll need to install the Debugger for Chrome extension.

Note: This tutorial assumes you have the Chrome browser installed. There are also debugger extensions for the Edge and Firefox browsers.

Open the Extensions view (Ctrl+Shift+X) and type ‘chrome’ in the search box. You’ll see several extensions which reference Chrome.

Press the Install button for Debugger for Chrome.

Set a breakpoint

To set a breakpoint in index.js, click on the gutter to the left of the line numbers. This will set a breakpoint which will be visible as a red circle.

Configure the Chrome debugger

We need to initially configure the debugger. To do so, go to the Debug view (Ctrl+Shift+D) and click on the gear button to create a launch.json debugger configuration file. Choose Chrome from the Select Environment drop-down list. This will create a launch.json file in a new .vscode folder in your project which includes a configuration to launch the website.

We need to make one change for our example: change the port of the url from 8080 to 3000. Your launch.json should look like this:

{
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
    {
      "type": "chrome",
      "request": "launch",
      "name": "Launch Chrome against localhost",
      "url": "http://localhost:3000",
      "webRoot": "${workspaceFolder}"
    }
  ]
}

Ensure that your development server is running (“npm start”). Then press F5 or the green arrow to launch the debugger and open a new browser instance. The source code where the breakpoint is set runs on startup before the debugger was attached so we won’t hit the breakpoint until we refresh the web page. Refresh the page and you should hit your breakpoint.

You can step through your source code (F10), inspect variables such as element, and see the call stack of the client side React application.

The Debugger for Chrome extension README has lots of information on other configurations, working with sourcemaps, and troubleshooting. You can review it directly within VS Code from the Extensions view by clicking on the extension item and opening the Details view.

Live editing and debugging

If you are using webpack together with your React app, you can have a more efficient workflow by taking advantage of webpack’s HMR mechanism which enables you to have live editing and debugging directly from VS Code.

Linting

Linters analyze your source code and can warn you about potential problems before you run your application. The JavaScript language services included with VS Code has syntax error checking support by default which you can see in action in the Problems panel (View > Problems Ctrl+Shift+M).

Try making a small error in your React source code and you’ll see a red squiggle and an error in the Problems panel.

Linters can provide more sophisticated analysis, enforcing coding conventions and detecting anti-patterns. A popular JavaScript linter is ESLint. ESLint, when combined with the ESLint VS Code extension, provides a great in-product linting experience.

First, install the ESLint command-line tool:

npm install -g eslint

Then install the ESLint extension by going to the Extensions view and typing ‘eslint’.

Once the ESLint extension is installed and VS Code reloaded, you’ll want to create an ESLint configuration file .eslintrc.json. You can create one using the extension’s ESLint: Create ESLint configuration command from the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P).

The command will create a .eslintrc.json file in your project root:

{
  "env": {
    "browser": true,
    "commonjs": true,
    "es6": true,
    "node": true
  },
  "parserOptions": {
    "ecmaFeatures": {
      "jsx": true
    },
    "sourceType": "module"
  },
  "rules": {
    "no-const-assign": "warn",
    "no-this-before-super": "warn",
    "no-undef": "warn",
    "no-unreachable": "warn",
    "no-unused-vars": "warn",
    "constructor-super": "warn",
    "valid-typeof": "warn"
  }
}

ESLint will now analyze open files and shows a warning in index.js about ‘App’ being defined but never used.

You can modify the ESLint rules and the ESLint extension provides IntelliSense in .eslintrc.json.

Let’s add an error rule for extra semi-colons:

 "rules": {
        "no-const-assign": "warn",
        "no-this-before-super": "warn",
        "no-undef": "warn",
        "no-unreachable": "warn",
        "no-unused-vars": "warn",
        "constructor-super": "warn",
        "valid-typeof": "warn",
        "no-extra-semi":"error"
    }

Now when you mistakenly have multiple semicolons on a line, you’ll see an error (red squiggle) in the editor and error entry in the Problems panel.

Popular Starter Kits

In this tutorial, we used the create-react-app generator to create a simple React application. There are lots of great samples and starter kits available to help build your first React application.

VS Code React Sample

This is a sample React application used for a demo at this year’s //Build conference. The sample creates a simple TODO application and includes the source code for a Node.js Express server. It also shows how to use the Babel ES6 transpiler and then use webpack to bundle the site assets.

MERN

There is helpful VS Code-specific documentation at vscode-recipes which details setting up Node.js server debugging. VS Code also has great MongoDB support through the Azure Cosmos DB extension.

TypeScript React

If you’re curious about TypeScript and React, you can also create a TypeScript version of the create-react-app application. See the details at TypeScript-React-Starter on the TypeScript Quick Start site.

Angular

Angular is another popular web framework. If you’d like to see an example of Angular working with VS Code, check out the Chrome Debugging with Angular CLI recipe. It will walk you through creating an Angular application and configuring the launch.json file for the Debugger for Chrome extension.

Common questions

Can I get IntelliSense within declarative JSX?

Yes. For example, if you open the create-react-app project’s App.js file, you can see IntelliSense within the React JSX in the render() method.

#reactjs #vscode #javascript #webdev

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How native is React Native? | React Native vs Native App Development

If you are undertaking a mobile app development for your start-up or enterprise, you are likely wondering whether to use React Native. As a popular development framework, React Native helps you to develop near-native mobile apps. However, you are probably also wondering how close you can get to a native app by using React Native. How native is React Native?

In the article, we discuss the similarities between native mobile development and development using React Native. We also touch upon where they differ and how to bridge the gaps. Read on.

A brief introduction to React Native

Let’s briefly set the context first. We will briefly touch upon what React Native is and how it differs from earlier hybrid frameworks.

React Native is a popular JavaScript framework that Facebook has created. You can use this open-source framework to code natively rendering Android and iOS mobile apps. You can use it to develop web apps too.

Facebook has developed React Native based on React, its JavaScript library. The first release of React Native came in March 2015. At the time of writing this article, the latest stable release of React Native is 0.62.0, and it was released in March 2020.

Although relatively new, React Native has acquired a high degree of popularity. The “Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2019” report identifies it as the 8th most loved framework. Facebook, Walmart, and Bloomberg are some of the top companies that use React Native.

The popularity of React Native comes from its advantages. Some of its advantages are as follows:

• Performance: It delivers optimal performance.
• Cross-platform development: You can develop both Android and iOS apps with it. The reuse of code expedites development and reduces costs.
• UI design: React Native enables you to design simple and responsive UI for your mobile app.
• 3rd party plugins: This framework supports 3rd party plugins.
• Developer community: A vibrant community of developers support React Native.

Why React Native is fundamentally different from earlier hybrid frameworks

Are you wondering whether React Native is just another of those hybrid frameworks like Ionic or Cordova? It’s not! React Native is fundamentally different from these earlier hybrid frameworks.

React Native is very close to native. Consider the following aspects as described on the React Native website:

• Access to many native platforms features: The primitives of React Native render to native platform UI. This means that your React Native app will use many native platform APIs as native apps would do.
• Near-native user experience: React Native provides several native components, and these are platform agnostic.
• The ease of accessing native APIs: React Native uses a declarative UI paradigm. This enables React Native to interact easily with native platform APIs since React Native wraps existing native code.

Due to these factors, React Native offers many more advantages compared to those earlier hybrid frameworks. We now review them.

#android app #frontend #ios app #mobile app development #benefits of react native #is react native good for mobile app development #native vs #pros and cons of react native #react mobile development #react native development #react native experience #react native framework #react native ios vs android #react native pros and cons #react native vs android #react native vs native #react native vs native performance #react vs native #why react native #why use react native

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Conheça uma extensão para Visual Studio Code e comece a trabalhar com Code Review em seu próximo projeto. Essa é a sua chance de saber COMO USAR e trabalhar com Code Review no Visual Studio Code.

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Let me know in the comments below if you want more Visual Studio Code videos or any other videos. And like the video, if you like it.

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