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React

A JavaScript library for building user interfaces.

React popularised component-based UI development with a virtual DOM and a strict one-way data flow. Components are functions (originally classes; functions with hooks are now the standard) that return JSX, a syntax extension for HTML-in-JavaScript that the build step compiles to plain function calls. State updates trigger re-renders, and React's reconciler decides which DOM operations are actually needed.

Facebook released React in 2013 after using it internally for several years on the news feed and other surfaces. The project joined the OpenJS Foundation indirectly through the React Foundation in 2024, though Meta still employs most of the core team. React Server Components, introduced in React 18, substantially shifted the framework's architecture toward server-rendered components with selective client-side interactivity.

React is the most widely deployed UI library on the web today. Frameworks like Next.js, Remix, and Gatsby are built on it; React Native ports the same component model to native iOS and Android UIs. The wider React ecosystem covers state management (Redux, MobX, Zustand, Jotai), data fetching (TanStack Query, SWR), and many other domains.

npm create vite@latest my-app -- --template react