Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Tweak getting started guide #6597

Merged
merged 1 commit into from
Feb 1, 2024
Merged

Tweak getting started guide #6597

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
1 commit
Select commit
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
48 changes: 25 additions & 23 deletions src/content/learn/start-a-new-react-project.md
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -4,21 +4,40 @@ title: Start a New React Project

<Intro>

If you want to build a new app or a new website fully with React, we recommend picking one of the React-powered frameworks popular in the community. Frameworks provide features that most apps and sites eventually need, including routing, data fetching, and generating HTML.
If you want to build a new app or a new website fully with React, we recommend picking one of the React-powered frameworks popular in the community.

</Intro>

<Note>

**You need to install [Node.js](https://nodejs.org/en/) for local development.** You can *also* choose to use Node.js in production, but you don't have to. Many React frameworks support export to a static HTML/CSS/JS folder.
You can use React without a framework, however we’ve found that most apps and sites eventually build solutions to common problems such as code-splitting, routing, data fetching, and generating HTML. These problems are common to all UI libraries, not just React.

</Note>
By starting with a framework, you can get started with React quickly, and avoid essentially building your own framework later.

<DeepDive>

#### Can I use React without a framework? {/*can-i-use-react-without-a-framework*/}

You can definitely use React without a framework--that's how you'd [use React for a part of your page.](/learn/add-react-to-an-existing-project#using-react-for-a-part-of-your-existing-page) **However, if you're building a new app or a site fully with React, we recommend using a framework.**

Here's why.

Even if you don't need routing or data fetching at first, you'll likely want to add some libraries for them. As your JavaScript bundle grows with every new feature, you might have to figure out how to split code for every route individually. As your data fetching needs get more complex, you are likely to encounter server-client network waterfalls that make your app feel very slow. As your audience includes more users with poor network conditions and low-end devices, you might need to generate HTML from your components to display content early--either on the server, or during the build time. Changing your setup to run some of your code on the server or during the build can be very tricky.

**These problems are not React-specific. This is why Svelte has SvelteKit, Vue has Nuxt, and so on.** To solve these problems on your own, you'll need to integrate your bundler with your router and with your data fetching library. It's not hard to get an initial setup working, but there are a lot of subtleties involved in making an app that loads quickly even as it grows over time. You'll want to send down the minimal amount of app code but do so in a single client–server roundtrip, in parallel with any data required for the page. You'll likely want the page to be interactive before your JavaScript code even runs, to support progressive enhancement. You may want to generate a folder of fully static HTML files for your marketing pages that can be hosted anywhere and still work with JavaScript disabled. Building these capabilities yourself takes real work.

**React frameworks on this page solve problems like these by default, with no extra work from your side.** They let you start very lean and then scale your app with your needs. Each React framework has a community, so finding answers to questions and upgrading tooling is easier. Frameworks also give structure to your code, helping you and others retain context and skills between different projects. Conversely, with a custom setup it's easier to get stuck on unsupported dependency versions, and you'll essentially end up creating your own framework—albeit one with no community or upgrade path (and if it's anything like the ones we've made in the past, more haphazardly designed).

If your app has unusual constraints not served well by these frameworks, or you prefer to solve these problems yourself, you can roll your own custom setup with React. Grab `react` and `react-dom` from npm, set up your custom build process with a bundler like [Vite](https://vitejs.dev/) or [Parcel](https://parceljs.org/), and add other tools as you need them for routing, static generation or server-side rendering, and more.

</DeepDive>

## Production-grade React frameworks {/*production-grade-react-frameworks*/}

### Next.js {/*nextjs*/}
These frameworks support all the features you need to deploy and scale your app in production and are working towards supporting our [full-stack architecture vision](#which-features-make-up-the-react-teams-full-stack-architecture-vision). All of the frameworks we recommend are open source with active communities for support, and can be deployed to your own server or a hosting provider. If you’re a framework author interested in being included on this list, [please let us know](https://github.com/reactjs/react.dev/issues/new?assignees=&labels=type%3A+framework&projects=&template=3-framework.yml&title=%5BFramework%5D%3A+).

**[Next.js](https://nextjs.org/) is a full-stack React framework.** It's versatile and lets you create React apps of any size--from a mostly static blog to a complex dynamic application. To create a new Next.js project, run in your terminal:
### Next.js {/*nextjs-pages-router*/}

**[Next.js' Pages Router](https://nextjs.org/) is a full-stack React framework.** It's versatile and lets you create React apps of any size--from a mostly static blog to a complex dynamic application. To create a new Next.js project, run in your terminal:
Copy link
Contributor

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Why specifying "Pages Router"?


<TerminalBlock>
npx create-next-app@latest
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -64,23 +83,6 @@ If you're new to Expo, check out the [Expo tutorial](https://docs.expo.dev/tutor

Expo is maintained by [Expo (the company)](https://expo.dev/about). Building apps with Expo is free, and you can submit them to the Google and Apple app stores without restrictions. Expo additionally provides opt-in paid cloud services.

<DeepDive>

#### Can I use React without a framework? {/*can-i-use-react-without-a-framework*/}

You can definitely use React without a framework--that's how you'd [use React for a part of your page.](/learn/add-react-to-an-existing-project#using-react-for-a-part-of-your-existing-page) **However, if you're building a new app or a site fully with React, we recommend using a framework.**

Here's why.

Even if you don't need routing or data fetching at first, you'll likely want to add some libraries for them. As your JavaScript bundle grows with every new feature, you might have to figure out how to split code for every route individually. As your data fetching needs get more complex, you are likely to encounter server-client network waterfalls that make your app feel very slow. As your audience includes more users with poor network conditions and low-end devices, you might need to generate HTML from your components to display content early--either on the server, or during the build time. Changing your setup to run some of your code on the server or during the build can be very tricky.

**These problems are not React-specific. This is why Svelte has SvelteKit, Vue has Nuxt, and so on.** To solve these problems on your own, you'll need to integrate your bundler with your router and with your data fetching library. It's not hard to get an initial setup working, but there are a lot of subtleties involved in making an app that loads quickly even as it grows over time. You'll want to send down the minimal amount of app code but do so in a single client–server roundtrip, in parallel with any data required for the page. You'll likely want the page to be interactive before your JavaScript code even runs, to support progressive enhancement. You may want to generate a folder of fully static HTML files for your marketing pages that can be hosted anywhere and still work with JavaScript disabled. Building these capabilities yourself takes real work.

**React frameworks on this page solve problems like these by default, with no extra work from your side.** They let you start very lean and then scale your app with your needs. Each React framework has a community, so finding answers to questions and upgrading tooling is easier. Frameworks also give structure to your code, helping you and others retain context and skills between different projects. Conversely, with a custom setup it's easier to get stuck on unsupported dependency versions, and you'll essentially end up creating your own framework—albeit one with no community or upgrade path (and if it's anything like the ones we've made in the past, more haphazardly designed).

If you're still not convinced, or your app has unusual constraints not served well by these frameworks and you'd like to roll your own custom setup, we can't stop you--go for it! Grab `react` and `react-dom` from npm, set up your custom build process with a bundler like [Vite](https://vitejs.dev/) or [Parcel](https://parceljs.org/), and add other tools as you need them for routing, static generation or server-side rendering, and more.
</DeepDive>

## Bleeding-edge React frameworks {/*bleeding-edge-react-frameworks*/}

As we've explored how to continue improving React, we realized that integrating React more closely with frameworks (specifically, with routing, bundling, and server technologies) is our biggest opportunity to help React users build better apps. The Next.js team has agreed to collaborate with us in researching, developing, integrating, and testing framework-agnostic bleeding-edge React features like [React Server Components.](/blog/2023/03/22/react-labs-what-we-have-been-working-on-march-2023#react-server-components)
Expand Down
Loading