React Best Practices To Follow In 2021

 

React is a well known open-source JavaScript library that is used to create unique and innovative applications. It was created by Facebook and allows integration with many exciting components, libraries and frameworks. Also, developers can make their own components. Developing an app with React is not as simple as it looks. Knowing the react best practices will help you to develop an effective app within less time. Still, if you are not aware of the react best practices, then this blog is for you. Let us see the React best practices.

Know the reasons to use React for app development at- Why you should build your app with react native?

React Best Practices To Follow In 2021-

1. Project Structure-

1.1 Folder layout-

Architecture mainly focuses on reusable components of react developer architecture so as to share the design pattern among multiple internal projects. So the component-centric file structure should be used that means all the files related to a different component (Javascript, assets, CSS etc.) should be kept under a single folder. 

Components
	|
	--Login
		|
		--tests--
		--Login.test.js
		--Login.jsx
		--Login.scss
		--LoginAPI.js

This one is another approach used in grouping the file types. In this, the same type of files is kept under one folder. Here, same type of files is kept under one folder. For instance,

APIs
  |	
  --LoginAPI
  --ProfileAPI
  --UserAPI

Components
  |	 
  --Login.jsx
  --Login.test.js
  --Profile.jsx
  --Profile.test.js
  --User.jsx

Above structure is the basic example. The folders can be further nested based on requirements.

1.2 Css in JS-

In huge projects, theming and styling can be challenging tasks like maintaining nig scss files. Hence, the concept of CSS-in-JS solutions comes into focus. Following libraries are based on it-

• EmotionJS
• Styled Components
• Glamorous

Among those libraries, you can use as per your requirement such as, for complicated themes, you can select styled-components or Glamorous.

2. Coding Style Best Practices-

2.1 Naming Conventions-

When you work with React, generally you are using JSX(Javascript extensions) files. A component that you create for React should be named in Pascal case, or upper camel case. This translates to names without spaces and capitalizing the first letter of every word. If you have to create a function that submits a form, you should name it SubmitForm in upper camel case, instead of SubmitForm, submit_form. Generally, Upper camel case is called the Pascal case.

For globally used Constant fields in the application, try to use only capital letters. For example, PI = “3.14”;

2.2 Avoid unnecessary DIV-

When there is a single component to be returned, no need to use <div>.

return (
   <div>
   <Button>Close</Button>
   </div>
);

Whenever there are multiple components to be returned, use in shorthand form <> as below-

Know more at- https://solaceinfotech.com/blog/react-best-practices-to-follow-in-2021/

All About React Security Vulnerabilities That You Must Know

React is a popular front-end web library for app development. Though React is considered to be quite secure, there are some vulnerabilities that you should know while developing an application. React.js vulnerabilities can occur when you think that you’re using protective mechanisms of this library. It is necessary to remember what React can and can’t handle for you. 

Why You Should Not Ignore React Security Vulnerabilities?

If React.js is an important component of your tech stack, then there can be risk and implications  for your business regarding security leak. Developing react apps for web platforms and single page applications connects business with various information. This allows business to become competitive in the market. Nearly two out of three apps cause security flaws and sometimes developers ignore them which results in security issues with the app. A security breach in web apps could lead to unexpected consequences. So no one should ignore the react security vulnerabilities.

Common Security Issues In React Applications-

1. Securing React Application Against DDoS Attacks-

DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) can be a malicious attacks launched by unauthorized users who make certain services of an application unavailable or inaccessible to users. It is essential to keep protection  against DDoS attacks under control. Generally this security issue occurs due to your insecure web app or it had loopholes in masking the IPs of all application services it provides. 

DDoS attacks restricts the application from interacting with the host server leading to the suspension of the targeted online services. With some cases, DDoS attacks might flood your React project with malicious traffic rather than spending an existing service. Know the common DDoS React security attacks and their damages:

• HTTP flooding- Spoofing online services that leads to the permanent shutdown of app services 
• SYN flooding- misuse of the application services 
• ICMP flooding- Slowing down of the React application
• UDP flooding- It leads to inaccessibility of host services
• Ping of Death (POD)- Overflow of memory buffers

How To Handle DDoS Attacks?

• To capture all multi-type DDoS attacks, scrub the react application during development and post full development. 
• Install visitor identification to block malicious traffic from racing the internal codes.
• Captcha or JS tests helps to secure web app layer

2. Securing React’s HTTP Basic Authentication-

Securing the connection between the web client and the server ensures the security of HTTP and its authentication protocols. When you build an application it is necessary to check if the domain www header has a realm attribute. This attribute connects User ID and password. One of the most common security pitfall that many people forget  is providing a realm attribute which authenticates various users with separate code variables to avoid mismatch in authentication of various IDs and passwords.

A small mismatch between server response mechanism and the realm attribute will result in unauthorized users accessing any authentication information. It is necessary that if an authorized user makes a server request, the authentication of the web app should display a 401 status error page.

3. Investigating React’s API Security Concerns-

React APIs set up connections between the application and other platforms. These APIs allows controlling of other devices or the particular device in which the application has been installed.

Generally, these APIs automatically document information and self-implement them to execute necessary commands within the application.  Lack of authentication or business logic issues leads to React API vulnerability. MITM(Man In The Middle) or Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and SQL injection( SQLi) are common React API attacks. Know, how to reduce or eliminate React API security failure:

• Execute timely schema validations to prevent malicious code injections and security parser attacks
• Ensure that your application is secured with SSL/TLS encryptions
• Validate API call commands against respective API schemas

Know the optimization techniques in react development at- 6 optimization techniques in React.

How To Secure React Web Application?

1. Injection-

React security issue occurs because of the untrusted data transmission between user and server as a part of the command line in your application. One of the common injection flaws is SQLi. Prevent injection related security flaws by using command queries in parametrized format and write customized whitelisted validation codes.

2. Sensitive Data Exposure-

Sensitive data exposure from react web app and mismatch of APIs with app can prompt to unintended decryption of stored data. Know the following ways to secure app from data exposure:

• Ensure the encrypted algorithms version
• Disable automated form caching and auto-filling features which may get data from users

3. Broken Access Control-

Inadequate limitations on authenticated users lead to access and misuse of unauthorized data and functionality of your React web application. In most of the cases of access control failures, unauthorized users might even be able to change the primary key of any functionality or app data. You can control back full access by-

• Developing role-based authentication mechanisms
• Disabling functionality access to secure app.

4. Cross-Site Scripting-

This vulnerability can lead to serious problems. XSS attacks occur when an attacker  can trick a website and force it to execute arbitrary JavaScript code in users browsers. You can overcome XSS by creating automated overseeing features that can sanitize user input and avoiding invalid and malicious user input from being rendered into browser.

5. Insufficient Logging & Monitoring-

Common React security failure which results as a reason for the monitor lacking the application periodically ignoring upgrades, and security issues that might be existing. You must ensure all server-side validation data input failures are logged with sufficient identification, and provide trail to all data within the app to avoid suspicious data access or data deletion.

Know more at- https://solaceinfotech.com/blog/all-about-react-security-vulnerabilities-that-you-must-know/

Why You Should Render React On Server Side?

Most of you likely use React CLI, also called Create React App (CRA). Using CRA allows you to get up and running with ease and has a lot of other advantages. Notwithstanding, building with CRA has a couple of disadvantages, for instance, when you view source of a web page from a web application initialized with CRA, you will see that it’s practically empty page with simply the <head> segment however hardly anything within <body>.

This is because CRA renders your application in the client- side, which means the built.js file is first downloaded to the user’s browser before the remaining of the page starts loading. This increases the initial load time and some web crawlers can’t index the website. Is there a better way to render your app? Yes!

This is where server-side rendering for React comes in. Here, you will get to introduce with SSR React, reasons to use it and some popular frameworks for rendering React on the server side. I would like to address when SSR React doesn’t make sense. This article is gone for developers previously working with React on the client side.

What is server- side rendering (SSR)?

Server-side rendering (SSR) is when content on your web page is rendered on the server and not on your browser using JavaScript. For instance, when you have a PHP or WordPress site, the page is loaded from content that is coming by means of HTTP which was rendered on the server and comes as completely rendered HTML. This is rather than React application built with CRA, which just sends a .js file to the client and the clients’ browser JavaScript engine makes the markup after the .js file is loaded. Instances of traditional SSR languages/ frameworks are PHP, Java, ASP .NET and Node.js.

All things considered, this is the manner by which content was rendered on early websites, until the convergence of client-side libraries. In any case, presently, server-side rendered React applications use Node for the server which is a key difference to traditional server-rendered applications.

Why you should move to the server side?

1. Performance-

Performance is the main reason for moving to server- side rendering. SSR implies there is no requirement for loaders or spinners for the initial load. Quicker load times lead to a superior experience for the end client. This is one reason numerous huge organizations are adopting the SSR approach for their sites.

2. SEO-

At this point, you have most likely heard that Google presently crawls web applications built with JavaScript, you are in an ideal situation having server-side rendered content prepared for Google and other search engines to crawl your website. The benefit with SSR is that you get the advantages of a conventional site’s SEO since the whole page would now be able to be crawled by bots.

3. Social sharing-

The other advantage with SSR is that you get a detailed snippet and featured image when sharing your web page’s content by means of social media. This won’t be conceivable when you have simply client- side rendered applications. 

How to get started with an SSR app?

Started without frameworks is conceivable, yet I wouldn’t suggest this methodology since there are numerous considerations and moving parts in a React SSR application. For instance, you need to deal with bundling, minification, hot reload, all on your own.

React SSR frameworks–

If you want to render React on the server side, here are some frameworks you can consider:

1. Next.js-

Next.js is an incredible framework with a great community around it. With Next.js, you don’t need to stress over bundling, minification or hot reloading, you get a great many highlights out of the container. You can make pages as React components within files. You might be utilized to this if you worked with PHP. Notwithstanding the community and support, there are numerous organizations utilizing Next.js in production including npm, Netflix and Autho.

2. Razzle-

Razzle is a tool that abstracts all complex configuration required for SSR into a single dependency - giving you the great developer experience of create-react-app, but then leaving the rest of your application’s architectural choices about frameworks, routing, and data fetching up to you. 

It’s easy to start with Razzle and it makes use of React Router 4, dissimilar to Next.js which doesn’t have a router out of the box.

<div class=”section-inner sectionLayout–insetColumn”>

Alternatives-

React is not a silver bullet. Maybe your team is familiar with Vue or another JavaScript framework. Possibly a static site will best suit your use case. If you would prefer not to use React or if you might want to use a Static Site Generator, here are a few other options.

1. Nuxt.js-

Nuxt.js is a server-side rendering framework for Vue.js and is well known in the Vue.js community. If you are searching for choices Next.js or Razzle in the Vue.js world, do try this out.

2. Gatsby-

You would have seen all popular JavaScript designers talk about Gatsby. It is a React-based Static Site Generator that has won the hearts of many with its exceptional UX (User Experience) and DX (Developer Experience). To be precise, it doesn’t do SSR at run time. Instead, Gatsby does server- side rendering with Node.js at build time, where it makes static HTML, CSS, and JS when deploying the site.

This leads to quick load times and has further optimizations, for example, route based code splitting and prefetching.

Do you always need SSR?

The short answer would be no. Not all applications need server-side rendering, particularly applications with a dashboard and authentications that will not require SEO or sharing through social media. Also, the expertise for building a server-rendered React application is higher than an application initialized using create- react- app.

In particular, SSR React applications cost much more in terms of resources since you have to keep a Node server up and running. There are times you want to choose the server- side rendering for your React applications.

Conclusion-

Choosing the server side technology is crucial act. Using React on server side has many benefits apart from mentioned above. Here we have covered the performance, search engine visibility and social sharing advantages. Choose the technology as per your requirement. 

We at solace are here to help you through our experts. You can consult with solace team for choosing the technology for server side rendering apps. You can discuss with experts for issues regarding server side development. Team is well proficient in new technologies and trends. We will be happy to help you through best knowledge.