In this guide, we are going to have a look at some of the topmost best React Developer Tools that can help make your software development easy. Whilst, bearing in mind, that the market for React application development is rapidly expanding. And as the digital world expands, so does the demand for new websites, applications, and software platforms as well.
Any developer or React Development Company nowadays requires the best tools available for the best results. For instance, if you want to create a web application using React, Redux, and React-router and you also want that application to be scalable then Rekit is a very perfect tool for you. It’s a tool for building scalable web apps with React, Redux, and React-router.
In addition, it’s an all-in-one solution for creating modern React apps. If you don’t want to focus on patterns, configuration, and large libraries and only want to deal with business logic then this tool is perfect for you. In this tool, you will find access to Rekit Studio which will show you an overview of all pages, reducers, and components.
So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and connect this tool with your React project. All you’ll need is to install Rekit using the very basic command lines in order to use it in your React project. That said, before we can see the full list of the other topmost best React developer tools, let’s learn more about React.
What Is React And Why Use ReactJS?
React is a JavaScript framework that allows you to design and manage stateless and stateful user interfaces. It defines and partitions a user interface into UI components declaratively using HTML-like nodes called React nodes. Finally, React nodes are translated into a UI rendering format. So, why should you use ReactJS in developing apps?
Well, this a very crucial question that we face now — why we should embrace ReactJS in our websites, applications, and software platforms development. To enumerate, ReactJS stands out among the several open-source solutions available in the market for front-end web application development owing to its numerous advantages.
Some of the benefits include:
- The Virtual Document Object Model supports JSX via the Babel processor for element generation.
- Component-based design and well-defined architecture are easier to understand.
- Provides substantial code reuse for mobile app development
- As an application architecture, one-way data binding with Flux controls is used.
With React being one of the top front-end development frameworks, it’s important to have the right tools to help you with your development process. React Developer Tools are essential for software development. They help you to develop and debug your React applications easily.
What React Developer Tools Are All About
As aforementioned, React Developer Tools are a series of frameworks, libraries, and extensions designed to guide the development of React. Developers use code generators, test tools, debug extensions, and other React tools to make the code stronger and more stable. As an example, you can create React App By Facebook in a very simple and easy way.
Not to mention, this is one of the most popular tools in the React developers community. You will find more than 89K stars on GitHub for this. Basically, it is developed by Facebook. It is best suitable for beginners and any new react project. There are a few notable features of this tool that are worth mentioning, especially, for beginner app developers.
You can consider the following:
- No requirement for Build Configurations
- Don’t worry about the best project structure & Support Modules
- Setup your React app with a single command
If you’d like to give it a try, just follow the following link Create React App: Setting development environment for a detailed description of using it. With that in mind, in today’s web development technology trends, React developers marketplace is in high demand. Or rather, you can say there are a lot of job openings for React developers.
Suffice it to say, it’s very important to keep updated with some new skills and react to developers. Equally important, you must also try to learn and know more about some of the other resourceful and topmost famous React tools.
1. React Developer Tools
Notably, this is a comprehensive toolkit for React development. And one thing is for sure, React Developer Tools being a comprehensive toolkit for React development, provides you with everything you need to get started. It includes a browser extension for inspecting React components, as well as a command line tool for generating React projects.
So, in general, you can download the React developer tools as extensions in many browsers like chrome, edge, firefox, etc. This tool allows you to check the component hierarchy of react. Some React Developer Tools also help you to know whether a particular application React.js has been used or not. And there are some common features of such a toolkit.
Such features are as follows:
- Rendered List of Components
- Rendered Subcomponents
- Helpful in measuring the performance of React App
- Can check each react component with a little bit of testing
- Easily identify the issue
Particularly, the browser extension is very handy for inspecting the React component tree. It displays the component hierarchy in a tree view, and you can click on any component to see its properties. You can also edit the properties directly in the extension and see the results immediately.
1.1. The React Developer Tools Chrome Extension
The React Developer Tools Chrome Extension (learn more) is a powerful tool that helps you debug your React code.
It provides a variety of features, such as:
- The ability to inspect the React component hierarchy
- The ability to inspect the React component props and state
- The ability to debug React code in the browser
In order to add the extension, just follow the following link React Developer Tools to see the full guide. Otherwise, click on Add to Chrome to get started. You’ll see a notice that the tool has been added to your Chrome. Thereafter, go to the Extensions Tab at the right on the top, and click on it. On the dropdown, one can see that the extension has been added.
1.2. React DevTools Extension For Firefox
Another great example is the React DevTools extension for Firefox (learn more) which is a great tool for debugging React applications. It allows you to inspect the React component hierarchy, view the React component props and state, and debug your React applications. Once you will add any of that to your browser you will be allowed to debug the application.
In particular, while using different features. You can inspect React tree and you can check how props, state, and many other things are working in the application. Detecting whether the application uses React.js is also so easy.
Now, open the app you want to check, click on the extension tab, and then on the React Developer Tools. If the extension remained colorful that means it is built with React.js and if it’s colorless then it means the app hasn’t used React.js.
Inspecting And Editing React Components
On the application, right-click, from the dropdown go to Inspect or type Ctrl+Shift+I. It opens the Chrome DevTools or Firefox DevTools, now on the top bar click on the double arrows, and a dropdown shall open like this.
Forthwith, clicking on the Components, the React Component tree will show up. Herein, one can inspect, edit the props, and the state, as well as understand the structure.
Similarly, clicking on Profiler will allow you to record performance information. By the same token, in order to remove the extension, you will have to click on Remove Extension so as to initiate the removal process.
2. CodeSandbox
CodeSandbox is an online code editor and prototyping tool that makes creating and sharing web apps faster. A link is all you need to hop into a sandbox and keep development work flowing. A sandbox needs no setup — use a template to kickstart new projects, or start from a GitHub repo and begin coding in seconds.
Experience the future of web development and build projects with the first cloud IDE for iOS. Create static sites, components, or full-stack web apps with a community who’ve crafted 16,294,479 public sandboxes and counting.
Other key features to note:
- Rapid Prototyping: Quickly create real, working prototypes. Test ideas earlier and iterate more.
- Knowledge Sharing: Use code, apps, and templates collectively. Learn from each other and bake in best practices.
- Better Feedback: Give and get feedback, on code or visuals, right in the editor. Take action and move forward faster.
- Integrated With GitHub: Import and run repos direct from GitHub. Or export your sandbox to a repo.
On one hand, it’s supercharged with npm, where you can use private packages, or any of the 1M+ public ones, to build powerful apps quickly. On the other hand, it’s also optimized for
frameworks — custom environments built specifically for React, Vue, Angular, and many more.
Basically, CodeSandbox is an equivalent online JavaScript coding environment. It has special functionality for React developers. Its code editor allows you to create and deploy the react app with a single click. You may subsequently download the entire project and add a template. You may also deploy the app to Netlify or Vercel if you like.
3. Reactide
At its core, Reactide is a complete React development environment with hot module reloading, component visualization, and component repository. The adaptable development environment of Reactide includes an integrated Node server and a customized browser emulator. Additionally, no servers or build tools need to be configured as a result.
For your information, Reactide is the first tailored and most recommended IDE for web application development in React. You can use GitHub if you want to learn about Reactide. There might be a question, why this one is so popular and most recommended then you should have to go through a few memorable features.
Consider the following:
- Streamlined Configurations
- Component Visualizations
- Hot Module Reloading
Uniquely, because of these features, this is considered one of the best tools for react developers. What’s more, in order to use it, you don’t need to create a server configuration. This tool is easy to use with the help of a custom browser simulator and an integrated Node Server. This integrated node server eliminates the dependency on built-in tools and server configuration.
4. Bit
Bits offers an open-source toolchain for component-driven software. Forget monolithic apps and distribute development to components. Technically, Bit lets you build, distribute and collaborate over reusable components across all your React projects and teams that are working with you.
It helps you build better software components. It allows you easily fix or upgrade the components across the system. It also makes backend development faster, simpler, and scalable. Used by popular companies like eBay, Tesla, and Dell.
5. React Sight
React Sight is a React visualization tool that displays the component hierarchy structure of a React application in real time. As a result, it gives us a holistic understanding of our application’s structure.
Chrome and Firefox extensions are available for React Sight; It is easy to install and learn and is compatible with React dev tools and various libraries like redux and fiber.
6. React Inspector
The React Inspector is a tool that allows you to inspect the React components in your application. It provides a way to view the props and state of a component, as well as the rendered output.
To use the React Inspector, open the inspector by clicking the inspect icon () in the browser’s developer tools. Then, select the React component you want to inspect. The inspector will display the props and state of the component, as well as the rendered output.
7. React Router
If you’re not familiar with React Router, it’s a library that helps you manage routing in React applications. It’s a little bit opinionated, but that’s a good thing because it helps you avoid making common mistakes.
React Router provides faster user experiences since the browser does not need to request a completely new document or re-evaluate CSS and JavaScript components for the following page. It also enables more dynamic user experiences, such as animation.
8. Storybook
The open-source tool, Storybook, allows users to build UI components and pages individually. It makes UI creation, testing, and documentation more accessible. In brief, Storybook is a development platform and an open space for UI components. It enables developers to design components freely and exhibit them in an engaging way.
The advantage of Storybook is that it operates outside of the React application, allowing us to focus on UI components rather than functionality.
9. Redux
Redux is a library for managing state in React applications. It is popular because it is simple and predictable. In a Redux app, the state is stored in a single store, and the store is accessed by dispatching actions. Actions are simple objects that describe what happened in the app. Reducers are functions that take the current state and an action and return the new form.
Here are more notable features:
- Flexible: Redux works with any UI layer, and has a large ecosystem of add-ons to fit your needs.
- Predictable: Redux helps you write applications that behave consistently, run in different environments (client, server, and native), and are easy to test.
- Centralized: Centralizing your application’s state and logic enables powerful capabilities like undo/redo, state persistence, and much more.
- Debuggable: The Redux DevTools make it easy to trace when, where, why, and how your application’s state changed. Redux’s architecture lets you log changes, use “time-travel debugging”, and even send complete error reports to a server.
Other Libraries from the Redux Team include the React-Redux — the official React bindings tool for Redux and the Redux Toolkit — the official, opinionated, plus a batteries-included toolset for efficient Redux development.
To get started with Redux, you will need to install the Redux library and create a store. The store can be created with the createStore() function. You will also need to create a reducer. The reducer can be created with the createReducer() function. The reducer will take the current state and an action, and return to the new state.
10. React Studio
React Studio is a visual designing tool that allows you to create React components and application flow based on your design. It has powerful property UIs and dynamic previews on the editing canvas for customizing your components.
It enables you to combine simple components into bigger units of whatever depth you may conceive. The space binds the entire team, including coders, designers, and code testers. It simplifies the process for them and maintains the consistency of the project.
Conclusion
These tools will help you streamline your development process and create better React applications. So, if you want to become a better React developer, incorporate these tools into your workflow. Besides choosing the appropriate development environment, it is crucial to pick a reliable React development firm to ensure a smooth development process for your business/project.
