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State in React: Why It Matters and How to Use It Effectively

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The biggest challenge that the react app will face is state management, it will be faced by front-end developers. although react can handle most complex problems, it is insufficient to take large applications with complex state management. This is why some developers utilize libraries like Redux, and others rely on hooks.

If the state flow of your app is not stable, it can affect your React app’s development speed.
so having a good state flow design can help reduce your development time. On the other hand, having a poor one can make your development increase.

In your React, the state is the most complicated concept. So, in order to understand it fully, let us find out what is State in React exactly. We will also talk about the different features of React and Redux that allow us to manage the state.

What Exactly is React State?

The components of react have a built-in state object which is an encapsulated representation of its assets. It is to make sure that they are always available for reuse.

Moreover, the state is just a fancy term that is used in JavaScript to describe a data structure. So, When a user interacts using an app, its UI will change according to the new state represented by the attribute.

Why is State in React Important?

If they are developing React applications, they use components to manage their state. This is best as its works very well for small applications.

However, it can become hard to manage the shared states across multiple components due to the growing sizes of the applications.

For instance, different elements will change after a customer completes a purchase. Then the product’s status will change, and the number of products that have been purchased will be added to the customer’s history.

That is why all developers need to consider scalability when it comes to creating applications. Without this, it is hard to keep track of what exactly is happening in the system when there is something that goes wrong, and this is why state management in react is necessary.

How to Use State in React Effectively

Give some time to Plan your State

Prior to coding your components, it is necessary that you take some time to plan the state management of your system.

This will give you time to extend and meet the needs of your customers. Although it might feel like an unnecessary job, however, it will help you with time and headaches later on.

Avoid Using Multiple Sources of State

The most common mistake in developing a component is having multiple sources of state. This can make it hard to visualize how the data flows and what is happening in the state.

Although, sometimes, you need to use different sources of state. But this does not mean that they can’t be abstract from one another.

So in order to create a State in react, the most important factor that you need to consider is the type of state that you want to manage. There are four different types of States that you should be managing in your applications.

  • Global state
  • Local state
  • URL state
  • Server state
  1. The Global State is the data that we managed and stores across different components of the app. It is important when we get data or updates in our app or in other parts of it.

An example of it is if a user is logged in, it is important for us to get their data and update it throughout the app. Although sometimes, we want to maintain a local state, it might become global.

  1. As in the Local State, the component is a representation of the data that we manage in one or more instances. In React, it is usually managed by using the use State hook.

For instance, if a form is disabled, we do not have to show or hide a component’s modal values. This is why we need to know the values of the form’s inputs and outputs.

  1. In the URL State, the data that exists in the web pagesare often not included in a category, but it is an important part of any application. In many cases, accessing this state is necessary for a lot of our applications.

For instance, if you are creating a blog, you might want to make sure that the blog that you are going to make is according to its id or pathname.

Additionally, there are a lot of pieces of state that we can identify, but these are the most important ones that you need to focus on.

  1. The Server state is a collection of data that need to be integrated into the global and local user states. Even though it is just a simple concept, managing it can be challenging.

Moreover,  there are many components that must be handled, like error state and loading, every time you update or fetch data from a remote server.

Bottom Line

This article aims to provide React state management tips and tricks. So, we hope that you will find them useful and be able to use them in your future projects.

Joel Gomez
Joel Gomezhttps://www.gadgetclock.com
Joel Gomez is an Avid Coder and technology enthusiast. To keep up with his passion he started Gadgetclock 3 years ago in 2018. Now It's his hobby at the night :) If you have any questions/queries and just wanna chit chat about technology, shoot a mail - Joel at gadgetclock com.

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