Introduction: The session starts with a brief overview of React components, state, and props. The goal is to build a simple chat room.
Setting up the Environment: The instructor guides the audience through setting up the code sandbox environment, explaining the file structure (index.js, app.js, styles.css), and how code changes are reflected in the output.
Basic Component Structure: The instructor demonstrates creating a basic React component by defining a function that returns JSX (JavaScript XML), which looks like HTML but is rendered by React.
Rendering Data: The instructor introduces the concept of state using the useState hook to manage an array of messages. They demonstrate how to map over the array to render each message as a div element.
Fetching Data: The useEffect hook is introduced to fetch data from an external API. The code fetches a list of messages from a provided endpoint and updates the component's state with the fetched data.
Styling: Basic CSS is used to style the components, including adding ...
The lecture goes over an explanation of how chat room or board messages are retrieved for a React app.
It goes over the call to the fetch function that returns a Promise.
Then it goes over how the Promise returned by fetch gets fulfilled with a Response object.
The body of the response is extracted and turned into an array of objects in JavaScript.
A new array of strings is made after calling map on the array of message post objects.
Finally, the mutation function from React useState is called to signal React the state for messages has changed, triggering the rendering of the component anew.
#reactjs
The lecture goes over the use of fetch to retrieve data for the messages in a React application.
The Fetch API can be used to make an HTTP request to a backend server such as an API that serves data in the JSON format.
With a GET request, the default behavior of fetch, data for messages in a chat room-like user interface are retrieved.
The call to fetch returns a Promise that fulfills with a Response object.
You can extract the body of the response and interpret its text content as JSON, thus creating a JavaScript object with the mapped information. This is also known as deserialization or unmarshalling.
The json method of the response object can be called to extract the body of the response and read it as JSON, thus creating a JavaScript data structure with the data. In the example, it creates an array of objects.
Note the return value of the call to json is another Promise that fulfills with the deserialized value, so another call to then is necessary. Having multiple then statements ...
The lecture explores the callback passed to the useEffect hook in React.
It uses a setTimeout to demonstrate that initially the data is in its initial state, until it is changed by the corresponding mutate function.
Once mutated, the state change signals React to render the component anew, resolving DOM discrepancies, and manifesting the new data to the user.
In the example, an empty list of messages is populated after some brief period of time, a simulation of what's like to make a request to a backend server to retrieve data.
#reactjs
