Part 2. Components and data in React

In part 1, you looked at React at a high level, took a whirlwind tour through some of its APIs, and built a handful of components. Hopefully this gave you a better overall sense of what React is and how it works as a technology. But a quick tour won’t allow you to take full advantage of React so you can build robust, dynamic user interfaces with it.

That’s where part 2 comes in. In part 2, you’ll start to explore React more thoroughly and take a careful look at its APIs. We’ll look at how you can create components and some of the different types of components that you can create. In chapter 3, we’ll look at how data flows through a React application. This will help you understand how React works with data in components.

In chapter 4, you’ll look at lifecycle methods in React and start to build a project that you’ll focus on for the rest of the book: a social networking app called Letters Social. If you want to peek ahead at the final project you can visit https://social.react.sh. Chapter 4 will help you understand the React Component API and show you how to get set up to build the Letters Social project.

In chapters 5 and 6, we’ll look at forms in React. Forms are an important part of most web applications, and we’ll explore how they can work in React. You’ll add forms to Letters Social and create a user interface that allows users to create posts and integrate Mapbox to add mapped locations to posts.