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Thomas Findlay
Thomas Findlay

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React Dashboards - Why Are They So Popular And How To Build One?

Dashboards are a very popular type of web application. A great thing about dashboards is that they can be used to display a variety of data in many formats to the user and provide relevant information and metrics. There are different types of dashboards, such as admin dashboards that can be used to manage users, accounts, and business-related data or financial dashboards that display useful financial information, statistics and various charts and graphs. One dashboard I worked on in the past was a platform for recruiters that incorporated information about jobs, applications, applicants, credits, etc. Whilst an admin user could manage all jobs and users and configure rules for the system, a recruiter user could create jobs and buy credits. In a nutshell, dashboard applications make it easy to see a lot of data quickly but also to effortlessly access various features.

What Tools Should Be Used To Build A Dashboard?

Dynamic dashboards can involve quite a lot of interactivity and data fetching, sometimes even in real-time. That's why a lot of developers choose frameworks that are declarative and can be used to build single-page applications (SPAs). Good examples are React, Vue and Angular. A single page application avoids page reloads, so the UI can be updated instantly in many different places after API requests are performed. For example, a dashboard home page could display a few different widgets, and each of them can make its own API requests to fetch required data. What's more, these frameworks are component-based, and components are great for encapsulating and reusing common UI elements and logic. Most dashboard applications do not require any search engine optimisation, as they often require a user to be authenticated, so that's another point for SPAs.

Learn More About How To Build Dashboards using React

Building a dashboard might seem like an overwhelming task at the start. There are so many things going on, after all, such as displaying dashboard widgets and providing users with the capability to configure them. Fortunately, building a dashboard might be easier than you think. I've written a tutorial called React Dashboard Tutorial—How To Build an Interactive Dashboard - it will walk you through how to create an interactive dashboard in React.

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