Simplify Your React App’s Complexity
Managing activity between pages in React can be a breeze if you know the secret to keeping things organized. The traditional approach of passing props down and back up with every change makes sense, but it can quickly become messy and slow. By categorizing your components into two simple groups and separating each page’s responsibility, you can eliminate the need to pass down numerous props and keep many of them hidden from the address bar.
Page Components vs. Block Components
Let’s break down an application into functional blocks of HTML. If you’re familiar with Content Management Systems (CMS), you know that managing “pages” separately from “blocks” of content is a common practice. For example, an application has a blog post object with multiple representations: a page specific to that single blog post, a blog main page with a list of 10 posts per page, a “newest posts” section on the homepage, and an author page with all their posts. The blog page focuses on the individual blog post content, while the blog block can be used anywhere, regardless of context.
Tying Pages to URLs
To separate functionality into pages in React without sacrificing the ability to pass information between, it’s essential to structure your app with many page components that can utilize any number of block components. One popular way to do this is by using react-router. By leveraging react-router-dom, you can manage the history object as part of your app’s state and props.
The Power of the History Object
Did you know that the DOM already has an object that contains all the properties of the URL segments? The history object manages where you’re at and where you’ve been using state! By passing the history object into props on page components, you can maintain state variables even if they change at the top level, down into each page, and between them.
Step-by-Step Guide to Simplifying Your App
- Pages: Break down your app into separate pages, each with its own responsibility. With react-router, you can pass params into the URL, even dynamically setting URLs.
- Mapping the History: By taking dynamic URL pieces and moving them into parameters, you can avoid the need for the application to have knowledge of the database. This has significant processing savings implications.
- The Fun Stuff: react-router includes the ability to pick up on parameters, hashes, or anything else you may want to check in the URL. Every one of these is immediately available for the page component.
Simplify Your State and Props
After refactoring, you can think of each page of your application as separate mini-apps, only responsible for their own features. Break out repeated features between pages into block components that get used on each page. This keeps your state and props few and responsibilities small.
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