How to Create Perfect React.js/Node.js Web Apps?

What makes web apps cool? Of course, there are a lot of development approaches, and you can use any of them. In this article, we’ve gathered the best practices that help us create really impactful React.js/Node.js web apps.

First-pass yield and matching the design specifications

To ensure exceptional app performance, we suggest the following tactics and techniques:

• Pixel-perfect implementation: we use Sketch to implement the provided design specifications precisely, guaranteeing accurate reproduction of fonts, sizes, alignment, padding, and other UI elements.
• CSS frameworks and component library: we use Material UI React component library to maintain consistency in styling and ensure responsive design.
• Design systems and component libraries: we create a design system and component library using tools like Storybook. It enables isolated development and testing of components.
• Responsive design and cross-browser compatibility: we implement the responsive design using CSS media queries and flexbox or CSS grid layouts. Besides, we recommend cross-browser compatibility tools like BrowserStack or LambdaTest.
• Accessibility and internationalization: we apply tools like axe and react-i18next to ensure that our application meets accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1) and can be easily translated into multiple languages.
• Code reviews and pair programming: our development team follows a rigorous code review process using GitHub’s Pull Requests feature, ensuring that every change is reviewed and approved by at least one other team member. Pair programming sessions can verify the accuracy of the critical parts of the application.
• Automated testing: we implement a comprehensive testing strategy, including unit tests (using Jest and React Testing Library), integration tests, and end-to-end tests (using tools like Cypress or TestCafe).
• Performance optimization: we use tools like Lighthouse and WebPageTest to analyze and optimize web apps’ performance, ensuring fast loading times and a smooth user experience.

Speed and quality of development

To ensure the speed and quality of development within React and Node technologies, we recommend using the following technologies and frameworks:

• Next.js is a production-ready framework built on React, with features like server-side rendering (SSR), static site generation (SSG), and API routes. Next.js is an excellent choice for ensuring fast loading times and SEO optimization, as it enables your eCommerce application to be easily indexed by search engines.
• Redux or MobX can help you efficiently manage the application state and a predictable data flow across components. Redux is famous for its unidirectional data flow and immutable state management, while MobX is known for its more flexible, reactive approach.
• Nest.js: for your Node.js backend, Nest.js is a fast enterprise-level web framework. It allows for the rapid development of robust RESTful or GraphQL APIs with support for middleware, routing, and easy integration with various databases.
• TypeScript for both frontend and backend can enhance code quality and maintainability through static typing, better tooling, and improved code navigation. It helps catch potential issues early in the development process, reducing the likelihood of runtime errors.
• Styled-components or Emotion: these CSS-in-JS libraries enable you to write modular and maintainable CSS scoped to individual components, reducing the risk of style conflicts and ensuring a consistent app design.
• Webpack or Parcel: these bundlers can optimize your application’s assets, such as JavaScript, CSS, and images. They support code splitting, tree shaking, and hot module replacement, which can significantly improve your app’s performance.
• Docker can streamline the deployment process and ensure consistency across different environments. It helps simplify dependency management and makes deploying on various platforms easier.
• Database: we mostly stick to a traditional relational MySQL database due to the project-specific requirements.

Development process under control

We leverage effective control and reporting techniques to ensure the project’s success by streamlining our development process, fostering a collaborative environment, and facilitating the delivery of high-quality software.

Scrum approach

Our team mainly works with the Scrum framework, enabling us to adapt to changing requirements, prioritize tasks, and deliver value frequently. Critical aspects of our Scrum approach include:

• Sprint Planning: We conduct Sprint Planning meetings to define a set of user stories and priorities for the upcoming sprint, ensuring that the team focuses on the most critical tasks.
• Daily Stand-ups: The team holds daily stand-up meetings to discuss progress, identify roadblocks, and maintain transparency within the team.
• Sprint Review: At the end of each sprint, we hold a Sprint Review to demonstrate the completed work to stakeholders, gather feedback, and adjust our priorities accordingly.
• Sprint Retrospective: After each sprint, the team conducts a retrospective to reflect on the sprint, identify areas for improvement, and implement action items in the next sprint.

CI/CD

We establish a robust CI/CD pipeline to automate our build, test, and deployment processes, ensuring that any issues are caught and resolved quickly:

• Continuous Integration: On every code commit, our pipeline will automatically build the application, run unit and integration tests, and perform static code analysis. It helps us maintain a high level of code quality and reduces the likelihood of bugs reaching production.
• Continuous Deployment: We will automate the deployment process to staging and production environments, allowing us to deliver new features and bug fixes faster and with minimal manual intervention.

Code reviews 

Our development team follows a rigorous code review process to ensure high-quality code, maintainability, and knowledge sharing:

• Pull Requests: Developers create Pull Requests (PRs) for each feature or bug fix, allowing other team members to review the changes before merging into the main branch.
• Review process: Team members thoroughly review the proposed changes, providing constructive feedback and suggestions for improvement. It helps maintain code quality, share knowledge, and ensure the implemented features meet the project requirements.
• Pair programming: For critical parts of the application or complex tasks, developers can engage in pair programming sessions to collaboratively develop high-quality code and ensure that the best practices are followed.

We hope these technical approaches will help you elevate your web apps development and expand your functional and scalable tool choices.