As your React application becomes complex the last thing you want to handle is even more complex CSS!

The React Digest A hand-picked weekly selection of the best React JS resources.

As your React application becomes complex the last thing you want to handle is even more complex CSS! Get started on solving this problem by reading this great write up on CSS modules by Chris Pearce. If you’re a Meteor fan it was a good week as version 1.2 dropped and an official tutorial was released to integrate the framework with React.

Have some feedback or something to share? Ping me on twitter @jarsbe

Elephants, The Three Code Ilities, & Two Months With CSS Modules chrispearce.co – Share Probably the most comprehensive and practical article I’ve read on CSS modules. If you want to learn more about this technique or you’re still on the fence about incorporating it into your workflow then read this article. The author, Chris Pearce, provides many compelling benefits alongside a lot of technical examples.

ES6 Features Commonly Used With Functional Style React open.bekk.no – Share If you’re seeing a lot of ES6 lately and aren’t quite up to speed then this article will get you started. Combined with the new stateless functional components (React 0.14), you’ll find these techniques make for much more terse code without compromising on readability.

Transitioning To Universal JavaScript www.redfin.com – Share With the popularity of Node and the advent of React, isomorphic or universal JavaScript applications are becoming commonplace in the commercial arena. It’s often a frightening step to move your own projects into the world of server side rendering so let Robert Gay walk you through what all the fuss is about. Robert discusses the benefits and lessons learned from switching to a universal Javascript stack in a commercial environment. No practical take-aways but an interesting read if you’re thinking about taking the plunge.

Understanding Redux Middleware medium.com – Share Ready for a headache? If you’ve been working with Redux you’ve most likely been working with a few middleware utilities too. It might seem magical at first but read this (a few times) and you should grok the concept. It’s heavily functional and you’ll probably need to write a bit of code yourself but keep at it and you’ll get there. The concepts are very transferrable and most importantly you’ll feel like a wizard once you write your own middleware! As a tip, I recommend reading through (and even writing out line by line) this minimal implementation of Redux to gain a deeper understanding of the patterns at play.

Meteor With React www.meteor.com – Share Meteor 1.2 was released this week alongside a tutorial for integrating React as the view layer. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not convinced by Meteor as a commercially viable option but if you forget “best practices” and just want to have a bit of fun, Meteor has you covered. Beside being fun the speed of development looks useful for prototyping interactive interfaces.

Be cautioned, there are a few aspects which spiked my heart rate; globals and tight coupling but I’m sure I just need a bit of Meteor enlightenment…

Approaches To Testing React Components reactkungfu.com – Share As I’ve said before, testing React components is a bit hairy. It’s easy enough to render and check the output, but there are numerous ways to do so and a lot of APIs to know. Marcin Grzywaczewski discusses several testing approaches each with differing objectives. He covers all the pros and cons and provides a good summary of the various testing APIs. The code examples are a bit idiosyncratic but the concepts are solid and should help you decide on your own approach.



Fast Rich Client Rails Development With Webpack and ES6 www.railsonmaui.com – Share An oldie but a goodie. Ruby on Rails is a fantastic framework but it isn’t so friendly towards modern JavaScript client applications. This article offers an excellent entry point for introducing Webpack and NPM into your Rails workflow without compromising your current stack.

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