How to Create a Single Page Application with React?

Single Page Applications are entirely built-in JavaScript (frameworks + libraries). With React Native, we can write a code in JavaScript, but the app’s UI is fully native. It does not bring along the drawbacks associated with hybrid HTML apps. React comes with a markedly new approach to create user interfaces. We can replace React with Angular.js, Vue.js, Ember.js, Meteor.js, Knockout.js, or any other JavaScript framework depending upon the project requirements.

What are Single Page Applications?

Single Page Applications is one of the three web application types (the other two are Progressive web Apps and Multi-Page Apps). It is convenient to code – device-independent – loads fast – uses AJAX – effective caching – easy to debug with Chrome –  easy to scan – well-formatted – good error-handling –  valid mark-up – clean code – usable formats and encourages reusability of code. Best examples include Google Maps, Gmail, Airbnb, Netflix, Pinterest, Paypal, GitHub, Facebook; therefore, single-page applications are adept for SaaS products, dynamic apps and social networks.

How does React contribute to the making of a Single Page Application?

SPA’s send an initial request forward.com/index to the server and receive an indexed HTML file. React Native makes use of Node.js, a JavaScript runtime to create JavaScript code. When a browser receives this response, React comes into play. It stops such a request by not letting it reach the server. Meanwhile, it requests the contact component and loads it, making single-page applications faster and 100% more reliable. React app brings up the “components” upon user request.

What is React Router? How will it assist in creating a React SPA?

React router comes with declarative routing capabilities to build single-page applications in React. It extends your understanding of how single-page applications work, appending the features of React cross-platform environment.

React’s powerful declarative programming model comes with navigational components that declaratively compose the application. It creates bookmarkable URLs for the web app or to navigate in React Native. React Router works everywhere there is React rendering. You can pick web or native accordingly.

How to build React Single page App?

To create a basic single page application with React:

Step 1: Check Background Settings

• Set up your development environment – Install all libraries and packages
• Create an HTML page to initialize React
• Install all React components that you need to process
• Use webpack or any other bundler to fuse the installed “components” to get the web app

Step 2: To create the Actual App

• Use “npx create-react-app app-name” to create a React App in the desired location
• It creates a directory with the name of the app “app-name” with some default files
• App-name –
• README.md
• node_modules
• package.json
• .gitignore
• public
• favicon.ico
• index.html
• logo192.png
• logo512.png
• manifest.json
• robots.txt

• src :-
• App.css
• App.js
• App.test.js
• index.css
• index.js
• logo.svg
• serviceWorker.js

Step 3: Install react-router-dom to route the requests by executing the following commands: npm install react-router-dom

Step 4: We need a router to wrap the App component

• BrowserRouter – to make URL’s like example.com/about
• HashRouter to make URL’s like example.com/#/about

Step 5: Your src/index.js file should include the following code

Step 6: Create a file by the name src/pages/HomePage.js with the following code:

Step 7: Create a file by the name src/pages/UserPage.js with the following code:

Step 8: Incorporate Switch and Route routers according to your preferences. Switch groups all routes together and ensures that they take precedence from top to bottom, while Route defines all “routes”; App-name.js file should include the decided “routes”;

This code matches the root route (/) to HomePage and matches other pages with the UserPage dynamically.

Step 9: Linking the page within the SPA using Link

Include the following code in src/pages/HomePage.js:

Step 10: Execute the code and view the localhost development server.

We have a “main parent component” to build any simple app. Each page of the app becomes separate components that feed into the “main component”; “React Router” helps to select the “components” to show and which ones to hide. The steps navigate from displaying the Initial Frame -> Creating the Content Pages -> Making use of React Router -> Fixing the Routing -> Adding Some CSS -> Highlighting the Active Link.

Conclusive: Where can we go from here?

React single page app does not involve going to an entirely new page. The pages are commonly known as views in this context and typically load inline within the same page. AJAX is always in action during changing the page content (without refreshing the page, the data within the content placeholder changes dynamically). Things get challenging while loading content inline.

But consider that single-page apps behave consistently with what the users are aware of – like aligning browser, back and forth buttons, URL during navigation. Ensure that your single-page app takes you to the correct place once you bookmark a particular view or copy/paste a URL to access it later.

React brings a bucket full of techniques – routing to help you handle all this and more. Routing assists you in mapping URLs to destinations that aren’t physical pages – “individual views” in your single-page apps. There are a bunch of JavaScript libraries that help you through this. We hope that this excerpt brought some clarity on how SPA’s and React Apps differ. Connect with us for a one-to-one on-react single page app development!