The Top React Component Libraries and When to Use Each

React component libraries make it simpler to build interactive and dynamic web applications. These libraries are pre-built UI components that can be reused in React projects, eliminating the need to build UI components from scratch.

There are different React component libraries, and each one serves a different purpose. In this article, we’ll explore a few popular component libraries and when to use each one.

What do React components handle?

The main purpose of React is to have components that are independent and can be reused throughout an application, ensuring there is consistency across the application. These different component libraries can be used within a React project to make development simple and easy.

There are many reasons why developers use component libraries, and they include:

Speed: Libraries are made up of pre-built components that make it easier to build, and these speeds up the process of development. For example, some libraries offer already-made components like tables, forms, buttons, etc. This cuts down on the time it takes to worry about the small stuff and helps developers focus on the more crucial aspects of development.

Responsive Design: Responsiveness is an important aspect of development; the application must look good on various devices, like mobile or desktop, and some libraries handle responsive layout so that developers do not have to write media queries using custom CSS.

Accessibility: Some React libraries have accessibility built into components, allowing Devs to skip having to manually code accessibility attributes like aria-label or manage focus indicators.

Consistent Design: Component libraries assist in creating a consistent design, ensuring that all parts of the application behave and look the same way. This could be the colour scheme or how the buttons look the same across an application.

Common React Component Libraries and When to Use Them

Let’s explore some React Component libraries and when to use them within an application.

Material UI

Material UI is a React component library with production-ready components to help build and ship features faster. These components are also flexible, allowing Devs to control how they look and behave to a certain extent

If you want to build fast, Material UI offers pre-built components like <Card>, <Buttons>, etc, therefore, there is no need to build from scratch.

Using MUI can help keep the design of an application consistent because the UI elements are modern. It also handles responsiveness across devices and handles accessibility like screen readers and ARIA attributes.

React Router

The React Router library allows for the control of the navigation and the customising of the URL of an application. When working with UI layouts, it uses custom components like <BrowserRouter>, <Routes>, <Route>, and <Link>.

Here’s a brief explanation of what each of these components handles:

• BrowserRouter and HashRouter: The BrowserRouter uses HTML5 History API, which allows JavaScript to control the browser history, and updates the URL without reloading the page. This allows users to navigate between pages using the browser's navigation buttons (forward and back buttons).

HashRouter uses URL hash # to keep track of routes and is often used to host static files that aren't sent to the server.

• Routes and Route: Routes act like a container that holds all the defined Route, while Route defines how a path renders a component. In other words, Route maps (or pairs) a URL to a component.

• Link and NavLink: Link replaces the anchor tag <a>, which determines the destination of the link. NavLink navigates to a route and also allows Devs to apply styles when a link is active.

React router also makes it possible to nest routes within each other, and provides custom hooks like use navigate to help redirect or move the user to a different route, and use params, which allows for the extraction of values from the current route, e.g., product ID.

Radix UI

Radix UI is a component library for building and maintaining accessible web applications. It is often referred to as a headless UI library because it does not have predefined styles. This means that Devs have control over the style components as much as they like.

Radix makes development simple, which makes it easy to maintain, and it is also browser compatible with accessibility features. It can be used for small or large applications, and it offers many features like Radix Colors, Radix Themes, Radix Icons, Radix Primitives, etc.

Here’s what some of these feature’s handle;

• Radix Primitives: Radix primitives are unstyled UI components that are behaviourally focused, allowing users to style components according to the project's requirements.

• Radix Colors: Radix Colors is a colour system that provides accessible color palettes. It also offers ways to apply colors and group them into categories, such as colors for accessible texts, interactive components, backgrounds, and more.

• Radix Icons: Radix Icons are a collection of icons created by the Radix UI team. There are over 300 icons available as React components; however, they come with a default height and width, but they can be overridden by applying CSS styles.

• Radix Themes: Radix themes allow you to customize Radix UI components. You can define custom values for colours, border radius, etc.

Redux Toolkit

Redux Toolkit is a state management library that allows you to keep track of the state of an application. For example, in a social media app where components change frequently and require consistent updates, such as comments and notifications, Redux ensures that the state stays consistent.

Redux is useful when different parts of an application need to share or react to the same state. For example, if a user purchases an item, the app can update a state that triggers a notification confirming the purchase and also inform another part of the application to print a receipt.

It is useful when the state of an application needs to change often, and it helps organize complex applications like social media apps, e-commerce apps, and more.

Recharts

Recharts is a charting library built on React components that allows Devs to build charts in React applications. Different types of charts, such as line, bar, Radial bar, and pie charts, can be created, and it also provides options to customize labels, colors, tooltips, and more. Recharts is responsive, and the size adjusts based on the size of its container.

It is useful for displaying data in a visual form instead of using plain text, for instance, showing metrics like revenues or displaying sales records, or stock prices; basically, any app that shows reports or analytics.

Zustand

Zustand is a small, fast, and scalable state management library for React. It allows for the creation of a global store that manages the state of an application. It is similar to Redux; however, its syntax is much easier to use, and it has lesser boilerplate.

Zustand is useful for apps that need to share state, and it's great for small to medium projects. Its components include:

• A store where the state lives.

• The state, which is data inside the store.

• Actions, which are functions that update the state.

• Selectors used to target individual states.

• Hooks that are called within components to read and update the store.

Motion.dev

Motion.dev is an is an animation library for React, JavaScript, and Vue. It allows the creation of high-performance web animations, from basic effects to advanced interactive gestures, using a simple API.

React motion uses the <motion /> component as its core API. The component allows Devs to pass props like animate, transition, and initial.

Motion also allows for the creation of smooth, production-grade animations, such as slide transitions, or have elements respond based on users' interactions, and create interactive and advanced animations using transitions.

Chakra

Chakra UI is a component-based library for building React applications. It provides already-made components that can be customized with style props. It comes with a default theme that can be overridden to create a personal theme with custom colors. Its components are also responsive by default, which saves the effort of writing responsive code.

TailwindCSS

TailwindCSS is one of the most popular CSS frameworks; similar to Chakra UI, it provides pre-designed components that make it easy to style reusable components.

It provides utility classes that allow style elements to be placed directly in HTML code. It also comes with default themes that can be customized, and provides responsive design utility classes to create responsive layouts instead of writing custom CSS, making the process of styling easier and faster.

It's useful for building fast and not having to worry about writing custom CSS.

React Admin

React Admin by Marmelab is a library that helps build admin panels, dashboards, and CRUD applications. It provides tools for data management, role-based permissions, forms and validations, and allows for the integration of third-party libraries for features like real-time updates, calendar and scheduling, and so much more.

Summary

React component libraries are a great addition to building applications as they handle so many things, from routing, design, dynamic rendering, and performance.

The React Component Libraries can be used for large and small applications, depending on what you want to achieve. Different libraries have different features they manage well, some more than others, and deciding on which one to use depends on the scope of the applications.

Frequently Asked Questions