HN Explorer

Ask HN: What are some good React tutorials?

144 points by Kaladin ↗ HN
I am beginner in this whole javascript/node ecosystem. Currently i am going through express.js framework, and would like add a client-side framework/library to my repertoire.Any suggestions would be welcome.

45 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 111 ms ] thread
mrborgen
Sorry for the self promotion, but I wrote a few React tutorials with someone like you in mind. They're only covering the basics of React, coding directly in an html file, so they don't involve getting up and running with Node+React. But I think that should be tackled after you know the basics of React.

Building Your First React App: https://medium.com/learning-new-stuff/building-your-first-re...

Building Your Second React App: https://medium.com/learning-new-stuff/building-your-second-r...

React.JS in 8 minutes: https://medium.com/learning-new-stuff/learn-react-js-in-7-mi...

Other than that, I always recommend the official tutorial: https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/tutorial.html

... and Egghead.io's videos: https://egghead.io/series/react-fundamentals

hackerboos
I remember doing that Egghead course over 2 years ago. Are they still valid?
mortona
I found it quick to understand the ideas behind React, but it was a lot more difficult to understand how to apply that to practical problems and to 'think' in React.

React.js By Example [http://reactkungfu.com/react-by-example/] was enormously helpful in showing how to structure various different real-world apps. So if you find yourself beyond the basic CommentBox examples, but not sure how to build your own components then this might help.

peterhunt
What's wrong with the official tutorial? https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/tutorial.html
livus
React and Angular can get very confusing for a first timer in front end. The official tutorials leave out a lot of magic happening behind the scenes. I tried to complete the official angular tutorial and even after completing it, though I could build an app, I still didn't feel confident that I had a good understanding of Angular.
tyingq
I suspect part of the rub is that with react being only the 'V' in MVC, stand-alone tutorials leave you with only part of the picture.

And, of course, people are choosing different paths to fill in the rest of the stack. All of which pull your specific 'style' of using react in slightly different directions.

vinhboy
I tried React about a year ago and this is how I felt. It was hard to understand how to incorporate React into an existing framework (Rails), because JSX was odd and I felt like I had to rewrite/rethink everything "V" related.
dcwca
You're halfway there, because React is the V but there's no MVC. That design pattern isn't common in the ecosystem, and instead a functional, unidirectional design pattern called Flux is a better fit.

Searching for MVC trips a lot of developers up.

tyingq
>>and instead a functional, unidirectional design pattern called Flux is a better fit.

And how many different frameworks are in common use to implement that pattern? :)

Edit: Also notable the the 'V' in MVC line comes from React's home page.

avalexandrov
I am using this one and like it very much so far: http://courses.reactjsprogram.com/courses/reactjsfundamental... It's by Tyler McGinnis.
peternicky
I am working through Tyler's free tutorial and so far have enjoyed it.
josefdlange
+1 for Tyler and his courses. There's something great about the way he presents the knowledge I can't quite put words to. He manages to "pull back the curtain" just enough to satisfy my curiosity without allowing me to go down a tangent path of little details that contextually don't matter until later. His frank demeanor instilled a lot of trust in me from the get-go, as well, which in turn left me satisfied when he says things like, "that doesn't matter right now -- we'll get back to that when it's important." Usually in tutorials or classes it's either high or low of that mark -- either I don't believe I will end up learning about some hidden principle that ends up being important, or I'll have way too much depth dumped on me and I'll be lost.
prezjordan
Surprised this one hasn't been mentioned yet! http://reactfordesigners.com/labs/reactjs-introduction-for-p...

Full of graphics and nice examples - it covers a lot of the reasons folks find react so fun to work with.

As a pro-tip: there is a lot of tooling, and things move quickly so a lot of examples on the web get outdated FAST. Don't be discouraged - it can be rough.

wesbos
I'm the author of http://ReactForBeginners.com

I've had 4500 people take it so far and have had tons of positive feedback - take a look!

owenwil
I can recommend this course!!
joshschreuder
Great course, worth paying for IMO. There is also a Slack channel where people can answer any questions you have.
innocentoldguy
I highly recommend this course. I think Pragmatic Studio produces some of the best, highest-quality tutorials online for Ruby, Rails, and Elm. React For Beginners is not a Pragmatic Studio production, but they do endorse it, and it definitely falls into that same category of quality and excellence.
Brajeshwar
I second the egghead.io video tutorials (paid). My team spent about a week and we're using ReactJS as our view for a Progressive WebApp for an eCommerce site in India.
darklajid
Not affiliated, but I subscribed to Stephen Grider's courses on Udemy and I'm quite happy with those.
zpalin
Agreed. I recently took these as an intro into Redux. Really well done courses.
rahimnathwani
Also agreed. His courses are awesome, and he takes care to explain things right the first time, rather than relying on repetition.
seanemmer
I highly recommend the Full Stack Redux Tutorial:

http://teropa.info/blog/2015/09/10/full-stack-redux-tutorial...

Learning Redux from the get go means you can skip a lot of React's internal state management / lifecycle methods.

The tutorial also covers a bunch of relevant topics like TDD with React, immutable.js, and socket.io.

shriek
I'm doing that right now. One bit that was a bit confusing and I don't know if this is relevant place to be asking is on "Moving to The Next Pair" section. Like how do I know if it's okay to move to the next pair? Because in core.js it seems to pick a winner of the pair as soon as it's called. (It probably talks about this further down but this kind of threw me off)

Other than that you're right. It's one of the complete tutorial that makes TDD actually enjoyable. However, that has mostly to do with how redux and immutability has been used in the tutorial.

seanemmer
I was a bit confused by this as well. Later in the tutorial, you will build a separate "Results" view that shows the tally of the current vote and lets you manually move to the next vote by triggering the 'Next" Redux action. Hope that helps.

Also for those interested in more on Redux, there is an excellent Getting Started tutorial by Dan Abramov (its creator) on egghead.io:

https://egghead.io/series/getting-started-with-redux

hardwaresofton
tldr; Don't treat backend and frontend the same, they have very different concerns, also learn the things that came before frameworks, and why they were useful/included in frameworks to begin with.

While your intended backend and frontend are both javascript, they have very different concerns. I suggest you learn them in as much isolation as you can, before attempting to mix the two.

I would highly recommend that you do NOT start from learning react. React is a line in a very long story that the JS community has been living. Please strive to understand how that story started, and where react fits in, and what methodologies are being used in the libraries/frameworks that are popular today.

Rather than starting with and binding yourself to react, I'd suggest you start with the minimum you need, and progress to different libraries as you need them, and realizing the actual need/niche for frameworks.

A progression might look like this:

1) HTML+CSS+JS - Basic static, well designed pages

2) HTML+CSS+JS+jQuery - 1) + simple interactions on the page, note that too much jquery will quickly become hard to reason about

2) HTML+CSS+JS+Databinding - 1) + declarative databinding (with a framework like Knockout) will introduce some structure into DOM updates over the jquery approach

3) HTML+CSS+JS+Databinding+Routing - 2) + a realization that knockout generally aims to work on one page at a time, but obviously sites have many pages, and SPAs can be beneficial in delivering instant-feeling user experience.

4) HTML+CSS+JS+Databinding+Routing+Components - 3) + realizing the need for separation and isolation between components to keep your sanity (both knockout.js and react offer components)

5) HTML+CSS+JS+Databinding+Routing+Components+Data - 3) Handling data from the server is obviously important, backbone has an oft-praised model system, and you could also flux pattern since you're interested in react.

5) Framework ? At this point, including x libraries to do all the things that you have found make your life easier may be less preferable to using a framework. Of course, this means you'll have to deal with the cognitive overhead of a framework but at this point, you should know exactly WHY you are using a framework, and start to distinguish the difference between how different frameworks bundle the parts.

Ex. the distinction between how knockout.js does databinding, how react does it, and how angular1 does it.

Ex. The difference between react's rendering methodology and backbone's (they both use a render function to determine what will be shown -- how is react different?)

I might suggest redoing a small app like TodoMVC with all these options (you can change it up by styling the frontend differently every time or something), I think a process like that leads to a more well-balanced understanding of frontend JS.