Lesson 3 - Components In React

3.1 - What Are Components

Components are the essential building blocks of a React application. It's a self-contained module that renders some output. Each component contains its own structure, style, and behavior.

For example, when you submit a form, a popup opens and congrats you, confirming that your form has been successfully submitted. Here, the popup is a component that renders the confirmation message.

Why Components are Important?

Components allow you to break down the UI into smaller, reusable pieces. This modular approach makes it easier to manage and understand complex user interfaces. It enables you to reuse it throughout the application, reducing code duplication and ensuring a consistent look and feel.

For example, the Navigation bar is a common component for each page of a website. In traditional web development, you need to copy the code for the navigation bar to all the pages, making it unnecessarily complex to update and maintain.

When you're using the React component, you have to build the navigation bar once, and it will automatically load to all the pages. This makes it easy to maintain and update.

In component-based architecture, each component is responsible for rendering a part of the UI, handling its own logic, and managing its own state. This separation makes it easier to maintain and update. Changes in one component do not affect others, making debugging and testing simpler.