ReactJS Advantages and Disadvantages

ReactJS Advantages:

React.js is extremely efficient: React.js creates its own virtual DOM where your components actually live. This approach gives you enormous flexibility and amazing gain in performance. React.js also calculates what are the changes needed to be made in DOM. This process of React.js avoids expensive DOM operations and make updates in a very cient manner.

It makes writing Javascript easier: React.js uses a special syntax called JSX, which allows you to mix HTML with Javascript. The user can drop a bit of HTML in the render function without having to concatenate strings, this is another fantastic thing. React.js turns those bits of HTML into functions with a special JSXTransformer.

It gives you out-of-the-box developer tools: When you start your journey with React.js, do not forget to install official React.js chrome extension. It makes debugging your application much easier. After you install the extension, you will have a direct look into the virtual DOM as if you were browsing a regular DOM tree in the elements panel. Isn’t it pretty amazing!

It’s awesome for SEO: One of the biggest issue with Javascript frameworks is that they are not search engine friendly. Though there have been some improvements in this area, search engines generally have trouble reading Javascript heavy applications. React.js stands out from the crowd because you can run React.js on the server, and the virtual DOM will be rendered to the browser as a regular web page.

UI Test Cases: It is extremely easy to write UI test cases because the virtual DOM system implemented entirely in JS.

ReactJS Disadvantages:

• it is only a view layer, you have still to plug your code for Ajax requests, events and so on. Some people get surprised by that.
• the library itself is pretty large.
• the learning curve can be steep.
• Integrating React.js into a traditional MVC framework such as rails would require some configuration (i.e., substituting erb with React.js).