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Best Pre-Built Solutions & Libraries for React

Gabriel Rodríguez
Gabriel Rodríguez
March 13, 2025
React
Best Pre-Built Solutions & Libraries for React

When it comes to libraries and frameworks for React applications, the possibilities are endless. It’s crucial not to reinvent the wheel; if you’re facing a complex problem, it’s very likely that someone else has already created a solution for it. This comprehensive guide will explore the vast ecosystem of tools and libraries that can significantly enhance your React development process.

Web Development Frameworks

Choosing the right web development framework is perhaps the most crucial decision, as it affects various aspects of your application, including rendering strategy, routing, configuration, and optimization.

Next.js

Next.js is undoubtedly the most widely used React framework for developing web applications. It has been around since October 2016 and is currently in version 15, which guarantees a large community and constant improvements.

Key features:

  • Multiple rendering strategies (SSR, SSG, ISR, CSR) based on the route
  • Excellent for SEO and performance
  • Automatic routing based on project structure
  • Easy configuration and quick start

Example of Next.js routing:

// pages/index.js
export default function Home() {
  return <h1>Welcome to my Next.js site!</h1>
}

// pages/about.js
export default function About() {
  return <h1>About Us</h1>
}

Astro

Astro is a relatively new tool for creating Multi-page applications (MPAs), launched in 2021. It focuses on performance with partial hydration and excels in Static Site Generation (SSG).

Key features:

  • Uses “Astro Islands” for interactive UI components in static HTML pages
  • UI-agnostic: allows working with different libraries within the same project
  • Supports MDX components and allows creating pages as .mdx files

Example of an Astro component:

---
// Component Script (JavaScript)
const title = "My Astro Site";
---
<!-- Component Template (HTML + JS Expressions) -->
<html>
  <head>
    <title>{title}</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>{title}</h1>
  </body>
</html>

Remix

Remix, created by the team behind React Router, was launched in 2021. It’s built on React and uses progressive enhancements on the server side.

Key features:

  • Built on Web Fetch API instead of Node.js
  • Implements nested routes for faster rendering
  • Optimized for both SSR and SSG
  • Excellent data loading and caching capabilities

Gatsby

Gatsby is a framework launched in 2015, built on Node.js using React and GraphQL, focused on developing SSG sites.

Key features:

  • Optimized for creating high-performance static websites with rich data sources (via GraphQL)
  • Large ecosystem of plugins
  • Good for blogs, portfolios, and small to medium-sized e-commerce sites

Docusaurus

Docusaurus is a framework developed by the Facebook team, published in 2017. It’s focused on SSG and is suitable for teams looking to publish documentation.

Key features:

  • Designed for documentation websites
  • Easy to set up and maintain
  • Integrated blog support
  • Compatible with MDX
  • Document versioning

Bundlers and Build Tools

Bundling and build tools are fundamental in the development cycle of React applications. These tools optimize and compile code and resources, ensuring efficiency and optimal performance for production.

Webpack

Webpack is a widely used static module bundler for web development. It allows compiling JavaScript modules and other resources like images and CSS into optimized packages.

Esbuild

Esbuild is an extremely fast bundler and minifier. It stands out for its speed, achieved through its implementation in Go and a focus on minimizing redundant work.

Turbopack

Turbopack is a next-generation bundler created in Rust by Vercel, announced as the successor to Webpack. It focuses on significantly improving the efficiency and speed of the development process.

Rollup

Rollup is a module bundler that focuses on efficiency to generate smaller and more efficient packages in the ES module format, making it ideal for libraries and tools.

Vite.js

Vite.js is a modern frontend development tool characterized by its speed. It uses an innovative approach for local development, leveraging native ES modules in the browser to offer extremely fast startup times.

Package Management

Proper package and dependency management is essential for maintaining the integrity and efficient updating of projects.

npm

npm (Node Package Manager) is the default package manager for Node.js and comes bundled with Node.js installations.

Yarn

Yarn is an alternative package manager developed by Facebook, known for its speed and additional features like offline mode and lockfiles.

pnpm

pnpm is a fast, disk space-efficient package manager that uses a unique approach to storing dependencies.

Bun

Bun is an all-in-one JavaScript runtime, package manager, bundler, and test runner. It uses the JavaScriptCore engine, which is faster than V8.

API Calls and Data Fetching

Libraries and methods for making API requests and data fetching are necessary for interacting with servers and external data sources.

Axios

Axios is a popular, promise-based HTTP client for making requests from the browser and node.js.

Example of Axios usage:

import axios from 'axios';

// Make a request for a user with a given ID
axios.get('/user?ID=12345')
  .then(function (response) {
    // handle success
    console.log(response);
  })
  .catch(function (error) {
    // handle error
    console.log(error);
  });

Fetch API

The Fetch API provides a JavaScript interface for accessing and manipulating parts of the HTTP pipeline, such as requests and responses.

Example of Fetch API usage:

fetch('https://api.example.com/data')
  .then(response => response.json())
  .then(data => console.log(data))
  .catch(error => console.error('Error:', error));

Apollo Client

Apollo Client is a comprehensive state management library for JavaScript that enables you to manage both local and remote data with GraphQL.

Routing

Routing is essential for handling navigation and organizing views within React applications.

React Router

React Router is the most popular routing library for React applications.

Example of React Router usage:

import { BrowserRouter as Router, Route, Link } from "react-router-dom";

function App() {
  return (
    <Router>
      <div>
        <nav>
          <ul>
            <li>
              <Link to="/">Home</Link>
            </li>
            <li>
              <Link to="/about">About</Link>
            </li>
          </ul>
        </nav>

        <Route path="/" exact component={Home} />
        <Route path="/about" component={About} />
      </div>
    </Router>
  );
}

TanStack Router

TanStack Router is a fully type-safe router for React applications, offering features like nested routing and code-splitting.

State Management

As applications grow larger and more complex, managing state becomes crucial. Here are some popular state management solutions:

Context API

React’s built-in Context API provides a way to pass data through the component tree without having to pass props down manually at every level.

Redux / Redux Toolkit

Redux is a predictable state container for JavaScript apps. Redux Toolkit is the official, opinionated, batteries-included toolset for efficient Redux development.

Example of Redux Toolkit usage:

import { createSlice, configureStore } from '@reduxjs/toolkit'

const counterSlice = createSlice({
  name: 'counter',
  initialState: { value: 0 },
  reducers: {
    increment: state => { state.value += 1 },
    decrement: state => { state.value -= 1 }
  }
})

const store = configureStore({
  reducer: counterSlice.reducer
})

export const { increment, decrement } = counterSlice.actions
export default store

Zustand

Zustand is a small, fast, and scalable bearbones state management solution.

Example of Zustand usage:

import create from 'zustand'

const useStore = create(set => ({
  bears: 0,
  increasePopulation: () => set(state => ({ bears: state.bears + 1 })),
  removeAllBears: () => set({ bears: 0 })
}))

function BearCounter() {
  const bears = useStore(state => state.bears)
  return <h1>{bears} around here...</h1>
}

Recoil

Recoil is an experimental state management library for React apps developed by Facebook.

MobX

MobX is a simple, scalable state management solution.

Jotai

Jotai is a primitive and flexible state management library for React.

Asynchronous Data Management and Server State Utilities

These tools focus on solving common challenges in data and state management in web applications, particularly in handling asynchronous operations.

TanStack Query (formerly React Query)

TanStack Query simplifies the process of fetching, caching, synchronizing, and updating asynchronous data in React applications.

Example of TanStack Query usage:

import { useQuery } from 'react-query'

function App() {
  const { isLoading, error, data } = useQuery('todos', fetchTodos)

  if (isLoading) return 'Loading...'
  if (error) return 'An error has occurred: ' + error.message

  return (
    <div>
      {data.map(todo => (
        <p key={todo.id}>{todo.title}</p>
      ))}
    </div>
  )
}

Redux Toolkit Query (RTK Query)

RTK Query is a powerful data fetching and caching tool, integrated with Redux Toolkit.

Apollo Client

Apollo Client is a comprehensive state management library that enables you to manage both local and remote data with GraphQL.

SWR

SWR is a React Hooks library for data fetching, focusing on speed and consistency.

Component Libraries

React has an almost infinite variety of custom component libraries to choose from. These libraries provide collections of pre-styled, ready-to-use design elements.

Material-UI (MUI)

Material-UI is one of the most popular component libraries for React, implementing Google’s Material Design.

Example of MUI usage:

import { Button, TextField } from '@mui/material';

function LoginForm() {
  return (
    <form>
      <TextField label="Username" variant="outlined" />
      <TextField label="Password" type="password" variant="outlined" />
      <Button variant="contained" color="primary">
        Login
      </Button>
    </form>
  );
}

Chakra UI

Chakra UI is a simple, modular, and accessible component library that gives you the building blocks to build React applications.

Ant Design

Ant Design is a design system for enterprise-level products, providing a set of high-quality React components.

Semantic UI React

Semantic UI React is the official React integration for Semantic UI, a development framework that helps create beautiful, responsive layouts.

Mantine

Mantine is a fully featured React component library with a focus on usability, accessibility, and developer experience.

Shadcn

Shadcn is a collection of re-usable components that you can copy and paste into your apps.

Styling

Styling is fundamental for visual presentation and user experience. Modern approaches include CSS-in-JS solutions.

Tailwind CSS

Tailwind CSS is a utility-first CSS framework that has gained significant popularity in recent years.

Example of Tailwind CSS usage:

function Card() {
  return (
    <div className="max-w-sm rounded overflow-hidden shadow-lg">
      <img className="w-full" src="/img/card-top.jpg" alt="Sunset in the mountains" />
      <div className="px-6 py-4">
        <div className="font-bold text-xl mb-2">The Coldest Sunset</div>
        <p className="text-gray-700 text-base">
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Voluptatibus quia, nulla!
        </p>
      </div>
    </div>
  )
}

Styled-components

Styled-components is a popular CSS-in-JS library that allows you to write actual CSS code to style your components.

Emotion

Emotion is a performant and flexible CSS-in-JS library.

Bootstrap

Bootstrap is a popular CSS framework that can be used with React through libraries like react-bootstrap.

Vanilla-extract

Vanilla Extract is a zero-runtime CSS-in-JS library with a focus on type safety.

Testing

To ensure the quality and correct functioning of React applications, testing encompasses everything from unit tests to integration and end-to-end tests.

Unit Testing

Jest

Jest is a delightful JavaScript Testing Framework with a focus on simplicity.

Vitest

Vitest is a Vite-native unit test framework with a focus on speed.

Component Testing

React Testing Library

React Testing Library is a very light-weight solution for testing React components.

Example of React Testing Library usage:

import { render, screen } from '@testing-library/react';
import App from './App';

test('renders learn react link', () => {
  render(<App />);
  const linkElement = screen.getByText(/learn react/i);
  expect(linkElement).toBeInTheDocument();
});

Enzyme

Enzyme is a JavaScript Testing utility for React that makes it easier to test your React Components’ output.

Integration/E2E Testing

Cypress

Cypress is a next generation front end testing tool built for the modern web.

Puppeteer

Puppeteer is a Node library which provides a high-level API to control Chrome or Chromium over the DevTools Protocol.

Internationalization

Internationalization is important for adapting React applications to multiple languages and cultures, making applications accessible to a global audience.

React-i18next

React-i18next is a powerful internationalization framework for React / React Native which is based on i18next.

Example of React-i18next usage:

import { useTranslation } from 'react-i18next';

function MyComponent() {
  const { t } = useTranslation();
  return <h1>{t('Welcome to React')}</h1>
}

FormatJS

FormatJS is a modular collection of JavaScript libraries for internationalization that are focused on formatting numbers, dates, and strings for displaying to people.

Code Formatting and Linting

To maintain code quality and consistency, it’s important to consider code formatting and linting to identify and correct errors, maintaining a coding standard.

ESLint

ESLint is a tool for identifying and reporting on patterns found in ECMAScript/JavaScript code.

TSLint

TSLint is an extensible static analysis tool that checks TypeScript code for readability, maintainability, and functionality errors.

Prettier

Prettier is an opinionated code formatter that supports many languages and integrates with most editors.

Form Handling

Handling forms can be tedious and complicated, which is why libraries exist that simplify the handling and validation of forms:

React Hook Form

React Hook Form is a performant, flexible and extensible forms library with easy-to-use validation.

Example of React Hook Form usage:

import { useForm } from "react-hook-form";

export default function App() {
  const { register, handleSubmit, errors } = useForm();
  const onSubmit = data => console.log(data);
   
  return (
    <form onSubmit={handleSubmit(onSubmit)}>
      <input name="firstName" ref={register({ required: true })} />
      {errors.firstName && "First name is required"}
      
      <input name="lastName" ref={register({ required: true })} />
      {errors.lastName && "Last name is required"}
      
      <input type="submit" />
    </form>
  );
}

Formik

Formik is another popular form library for React and React Native. It helps with getting values in and out of form state, validation and error messages, and handling form submission.

Example of Formik usage:

import { Formik, Form, Field } from 'formik';

const BasicForm = () => (
  <Formik
    initialValues={{ email: '', password: '' }}
    onSubmit={(values, { setSubmitting }) => {
      setTimeout(() => {
        alert(JSON.stringify(values, null, 2));
        setSubmitting(false);
      }, 400);
    }}
  >
    {({ isSubmitting }) => (
      <Form>
        <Field type="email" name="email" />
        <Field type="password" name="password" />
        <button type="submit" disabled={isSubmitting}>
          Submit
        </button>
      </Form>
    )}
  </Formik>
);

Documentation

When creating a React component library, it’s crucial to generate documentation for the components. Some tools serve to create and generate this documentation:

Storybook

Storybook is an open source tool for building UI components and pages in isolation. It streamlines UI development, testing, and documentation.

Example of a Storybook story:

import React from 'react';
import { Button } from './Button';

export default {
  title: 'Example/Button',
  component: Button,
};

const Template = (args) => <Button {...args} />;

export const Primary = Template.bind({});
Primary.args = {
  primary: true,
  label: 'Button',
};

Bit

Bit is a tool for component-driven development. It helps you organize, document, and share components between projects and applications.

React-cosmos

React Cosmos is a dev tool for creating reusable React components. It scans your project for components and enables you to render them with different props.

Content Management System (CMS)

The inclusion of a Content Management System (CMS) is another crucial point to consider, especially if the project involves managing dynamic content. Here are some tools to consider:

Contentful

Contentful is a flexible and future-friendly content platform that helps editors to manage and developers to serve content into mobile and web applications.

Strapi

Strapi is an open-source headless CMS. It’s 100% JavaScript, fully customizable and developer-first.

WordPress

WordPress, while traditionally a full-stack CMS, can be used as a headless CMS with React applications through its REST API.

Storyblok

Storyblok is a headless CMS that focuses on a great authoring experience.

Netlify CMS

Netlify CMS is an open-source content management system for your Git workflow that enables you to provide editors with a friendly UI and intuitive workflows.

Sanity

Sanity is a platform for structured content that comes with an open-source editing environment called Sanity Studio that you can customize with JavaScript and React.

Other Libraries

Animations

Framer Motion

Framer Motion is a production-ready motion library for React. It aims to provide a simple yet powerful motion system.

Example of Framer Motion usage:

import { motion } from "framer-motion"

export const MyComponent = () => (
  <motion.div
    animate={{ x: 100 }}
    transition={{ ease: "easeOut", duration: 2 }}
  />
)

React Spring

React Spring is a spring-physics based animation library that should cover most of your UI related animation needs.

Visualization of Data

Victory Charts

Victory is a set of modular charting components for React and React Native.

React ChartJS

React ChartJS is a React wrapper for Chart.js, a simple yet flexible JavaScript charting library.

Recharts

Recharts is a composable charting library built on React components.

Example of Recharts usage:

import { LineChart, Line, XAxis, YAxis, CartesianGrid, Tooltip, Legend } from 'recharts';

const data = [
  { name: 'Page A', uv: 4000, pv: 2400, amt: 2400 },
  { name: 'Page B', uv: 3000, pv: 1398, amt: 2210 },
  // ... more data
];

const SimpleLineChart = () => (
  <LineChart width={600} height={300} data={data}>
    <XAxis dataKey="name"/>
    <YAxis/>
    <CartesianGrid strokeDasharray="3 3"/>
    <Tooltip/>
    <Legend />
    <Line type="monotone" dataKey="pv" stroke="#8884d8" activeDot={{r: 8}}/>
    <Line type="monotone" dataKey="uv" stroke="#82ca9d" />
  </LineChart>
);

Tables

TanStack Table (React Table)

TanStack Table, formerly known as React Table, is a lightweight, fast and extendable datagrids for React.

Drag and Drop

react-dnd

react-dnd is a set of React utilities to help you build complex drag and drop interfaces while keeping your components decoupled.

dnd-kit

dnd-kit is a lightweight, performant, and accessible drag and drop toolkit for React.

Schema Validation

Zod

Zod is a TypeScript-first schema declaration and validation library.

Example of Zod usage:

import { z } from "zod";

// Creating a schema for strings
const mySchema = z.string();

// Parse
mySchema.parse("tuna"); // => "tuna"
mySchema.parse(12); // => throws ZodError

// Safe parse
mySchema.safeParse("tuna"); // => { success: true; data: "tuna" }
mySchema.safeParse(12); // => { success: false; error: ZodError }

Conclusion

The React ecosystem is incredibly rich with tools and libraries that can significantly enhance your development process. By carefully selecting the right combination of these tools based on your project’s specific needs, you can create efficient, performant, and maintainable React applications.

Remember, it’s important not to over-engineer your initial setup. Start with what’s necessary and add tools as your project’s requirements grow. As the React landscape continues to evolve, staying updated with the latest tools and best practices will help you build better applications and improve your development workflow.

Each project is unique, and the best stack for one project might not be the best for another. Always consider factors such as project size, team expertise, long-term maintenance plans, and specific project requirements when choosing your tools.

Lastly, the React community is vibrant and always innovating. Keep an eye on emerging tools and technologies, participate in community discussions, and don’t be afraid to experiment with new libraries and frameworks in your projects.

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