Mastering React Performance: Tips and Best Practices

Introduction

Building a React app is easy. But optimization is the most difficult part. In this article, I will be discussing some of the most popular techniques to master web performance in React.

Code Splitting

Code Splitting is one of the most popular techniques for optimizing web performance. In Code Splitting, we split our application into smaller chunks and load them when needed. <Suspense/> and lazy() will help us with this.

import React, { Suspense } from 'react';
const OtherComponent = React.lazy(() => import('./OtherComponent'));

const Parent = () => {
  return (
    <div>
      <Suspense fallback={<div>Loading...</div>}>
        <OtherComponent />
      </Suspense>
    </div>
  );
}

Image Optimization

Images can become an enemy of web performance. So, we need to use images in the React project cautiously. We can use techniques like Lazy Loading Images, Image Compression, and Right Image Formatting to optimize images in the project. To learn more about Image Optimization in React, check out my blog "Boosting Performance: Image Optimization in React".

const App = () => {
  return (
    <div>
      <img src="image.jpg" loading="lazy" height="300px" width="300px"      />
    </div>
  );
}

Memoization

Memoization is one of the amazing features of React. State and function re-rendering is an expensive computational task. To reduce unnecessary re-renders we can use the useMemo and React.memo functions.

const MyComponent = React.memo(TestComponent);

Debouncing and Throttling

Specially for scroll and resize events we do a lot of re-rendering in React. Implement debouncing and throttling for event handlers to prevent excessive rendering.

Caching

Caching is one of the most underrated ways to improve performance. Implement client-side caching for data that doesn't change frequently to reduce the need for unnecessary API calls.

Summary

In this article, I have discussed some of the most popular techniques for improving React Performance. If you want to learn more about Frontend Development and Software Engineering check out my profile on Dev.