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An update on async rendering #596

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Mar 27, 2018
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544c0bc
Migrated async update from Quip to Markdown
bvaughn Feb 6, 2018
e298b47
Wordsmithing
bvaughn Feb 6, 2018
9ff0f12
Split StrictMode into its own top level docs page
bvaughn Feb 6, 2018
0674c34
Added string ref section to strict mode page
bvaughn Feb 6, 2018
cdb4b9e
Added TOC header links to Strict Mode page
bvaughn Feb 6, 2018
289a2da
Prettier
bvaughn Feb 6, 2018
99fedea
Wording changes in response to PR feedback
bvaughn Feb 6, 2018
49464f7
Removed some unnecessary parens
bvaughn Feb 6, 2018
fe6b133
Add Dan as an author to "Update on Async"
bvaughn Feb 6, 2018
1314117
Wording improvements in response to Dan's feedback
bvaughn Feb 7, 2018
f005c04
Wordsmithing
bvaughn Feb 7, 2018
06d5be4
Prettier
bvaughn Feb 7, 2018
3696388
Increased Prettier line-width for examples
bvaughn Feb 7, 2018
ac23b1f
Trigger Netlify rebuild
bvaughn Feb 7, 2018
5cae7c6
Strict Mode blog title capitalization
bvaughn Feb 7, 2018
f70c0dd
Minor wordsmithing
bvaughn Feb 7, 2018
c1e67be
Wordsmithing in response to PR feedback
bvaughn Feb 12, 2018
75a43aa
Wordsmithing in response to PR feedback
bvaughn Feb 12, 2018
fb3b91f
Add explanation for render and commit lifecycles
bvaughn Feb 12, 2018
60d65ce
Wordsmithing
bvaughn Feb 12, 2018
f632f22
Wording changes for update-on-async and strict-mode
bvaughn Feb 13, 2018
626ac42
Moved StrictMode to docs rather than blog post
bvaughn Feb 13, 2018
7456327
Combined notes about react-lifecycles-compat
bvaughn Feb 13, 2018
2909738
Address more Sophie feedback
bvaughn Feb 13, 2018
5400338
Updated data-fetching example to show cWRP too
bvaughn Feb 13, 2018
813be17
Updated docs/recipes in response to a new GH question
bvaughn Feb 14, 2018
8de7dc4
Updated recipes to show updating/removing subscriptions
bvaughn Feb 16, 2018
c45fb40
Triggering rebuild of Netlify
bvaughn Feb 21, 2018
858c1a7
Fixed small error in example
bvaughn Feb 21, 2018
98d5a09
Added gDSFP to example
bvaughn Feb 21, 2018
442591c
Added example of updating subscription from props
bvaughn Feb 22, 2018
b1ce572
Typo
bvaughn Feb 23, 2018
2312173
Moved updating-subscription example into an external Gist with a note
bvaughn Feb 28, 2018
16eb646
Fixed typo
bvaughn Feb 28, 2018
4d16523
Typo
bvaughn Feb 28, 2018
9905159
Merge branch 'master' into update-on-async-rendering
bvaughn Mar 7, 2018
1ca6cfc
Moved async update blog post to a later, random date
bvaughn Mar 7, 2018
7408e07
Remoaved 'What can asynchronous rendering do?' section and instead li…
bvaughn Mar 7, 2018
3c75def
Deleted StrictMode and examples/images
bvaughn Mar 7, 2018
55650fc
Added explicit null value in state initializer
bvaughn Mar 15, 2018
97a109d
Added a note about experimental class properties usage in examples
bvaughn Mar 15, 2018
21fa116
Removed StrictMode from side nav
bvaughn Mar 16, 2018
92cf72d
Hardened wording a bit around async
bvaughn Mar 20, 2018
fa34fcf
16.4 -> 16.x
bvaughn Mar 22, 2018
b3bf0bd
Added getSnapshotBeforeUpdate recipe
bvaughn Mar 23, 2018
254fc8b
Wordsmithing nits
bvaughn Mar 23, 2018
b0c22f7
Wording tweak
bvaughn Mar 23, 2018
558d576
Reworked introduction
bvaughn Mar 24, 2018
7425aed
Typofix
bvaughn Mar 24, 2018
65b1496
Typo
bvaughn Mar 24, 2018
6eae811
Tweaks to async post
gaearon Mar 24, 2018
a2139de
Add a note about suspense
gaearon Mar 24, 2018
030980e
Merge pull request #6 from gaearon/tweaks-async-post
bvaughn Mar 24, 2018
e110ac5
Added a small TOC for examples
bvaughn Mar 24, 2018
ce060eb
Imported theme style tweaks from PR 587
bvaughn Mar 24, 2018
e143823
Added create-subscription example
bvaughn Mar 24, 2018
65eca09
Tweaks
bvaughn Mar 25, 2018
a3ea63a
Merge branch 'master' into update-on-async-rendering
bvaughn Mar 27, 2018
7ced9ce
Renamed blog post
bvaughn Mar 27, 2018
7cf5b58
Wordsmithing
bvaughn Mar 27, 2018
9f72403
Updated gradual migration note
bvaughn Mar 27, 2018
712f4de
Changed wording about app developer to React app developer
bvaughn Mar 27, 2018
4610392
Changes in response to Sophie's feedback
bvaughn Mar 27, 2018
b824bd2
Added getSnapshotBeforeUpdate to the polyfill notes
bvaughn Mar 27, 2018
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Remoaved 'What can asynchronous rendering do?' section and instead li…
…nked to 'Sneak peek at async' which shows Dan's video
bvaughn committed Mar 7, 2018

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m4tx Mateusz Maćkowski
commit 7408e07b62c2f6976a14ce1d08161b8a92039189
25 changes: 2 additions & 23 deletions content/blog/2018-03-15-update-on-async-rendering.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -1,9 +1,9 @@
---
title: Update on Async Rendering
author: [bvaughn, gaearon]
author: [bvaughn]
---

For the past few months, the React team has been experimenting with [asynchronous rendering](/blog/2017/09/26/react-v16.0.html#new-core-architecture), and we are very excited about the new features it enables.
For the past few months, the React team has been experimenting with [asynchronous rendering](/blog/2018/03/01/sneak-peek-beyond-react-16.html), and we are very excited about the new features it enables.
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Let's make this a bit more assertive. "Experimenting" seems like we're not sure what we're doing.

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👍


Along the way, our research has shown that some of our component lifecycles tend to encourage unsafe coding practices. They are:

@@ -19,27 +19,6 @@ These lifecycle methods have often been misunderstood and subtly misused; furthe

In this post, we will explore some of the potential capabilities of async rendering, and we'll outline a migration plan for components that rely on these legacy lifecycles.

## What can asynchronous rendering do?

#### With every new version, our goal is to make it easier for developers using React to build great user experiences

We have been fine-tuning the performance of React with every new release. However, despite what synthetic benchmarks say, we've found that the bottleneck in real-world apps is generally not React itself, but the application code that uses it. In order to unlock the next wave of performance optimizations and new features, we need React to be smarter about when to re-render components and flush updates to the screen.

> Note
>
> React already has some optimizations in this regard. For example, React batches state updates so that if you call `setState` multiple times in quick succession, it only renders once.

We found that asynchronous rendering can help in several ways. For example:

1. As users navigate within an app, newly displayed components often have asynchronous dependencies (including data, images, and code splitting). This leads to a lot of boilerplate code managing data fetching and displaying the loading states. It can also lead to a "cascade of spinners" as the data loads, causing DOM reflows and janky user experience. We'd like to make it easier for product developers to express asynchronous dependencies and to wait to show a component until all of its data has been loaded. React could keep the old UI "alive" and interactive for a certain period while the updated UI is not ready yet, and provide a declarative way to show a loading indicator if it takes more than a second.
2. Fast updates within a short timeframe often cause jank because React processes each update individually. We'd like to automatically "combine" updates within a few hundred milliseconds when possible so that there is less re-rendering.
3. Some updates are inherently less important than others. For example, if you're writing a [live-updating search filter input](https://zeit.co/blog/domains-search-web#asynchronous-rendering), it is essential that the input is updated immediately (within a few milliseconds). Re-rendering the result list can be done later, and should not block the thread or cause stutter when typing. It would be nice if React had a way to mark the latter updates as having a lower priority. (Note that even debouncing the input doesn't help because if the rendering is synchronous (like in React today)—a keystroke can't interrupt the rendering once it has started. Asynchronous rendering solves this by splitting rendering into small chunks that can be paused and later resumed.)
4. For UI elements like hidden popups and tabs, we'd like to be able to start pre-rendering their content when the browser isn't busy. This way, they can appear instantaneously in response to a later user interaction. However, we'd like to do this only [when the browser is idle](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/08/using-requestidlecallback) to avoid slowing down other parts of the page.

Of course, it's possible to implement some of these features today, but it's difficult. We hope to make them effortless by building them into React itself. By replacing problematic lifecycles with safer alternatives, we also hope to make it simple to write async-safe React components.

In the next section, we'll look at how to update your existing components to prepare for the upcoming lifecycle changes.

## Updating class components

#### If you're an application developer, **you don't have to do anything about the legacy methods yet**. The primary purpose of the upcoming version 16.3 is to enable open source project maintainers to update their libraries in advance of any deprecation warnings. Those warnings will be enabled with the next minor release, version 16.4.