Without a doubt, React has become probably the most liked JS library to create views for web apps. It is a highly flexible library that manages complex states efficiently.
There are two main concepts in React; React Hooks and Redux. Both play a crucial role in handling state issues and side effects, but their approach is different.
Whether you are a business owner or an entrepreneur, understanding both concepts is crucial in making informed decisions and when deciding to hire React engineer.
What are React Hooks?
React Hooks are the features of React that allow developers to use state and other React features without writing a class. Before hooks, the state was managed by class-based components, and managing stateful logic within functional components wasn’t possible.
With the introduction of Hooks, functions can handle state, side effects, and other core functionalities of React.
Some of the common Hooks include useState and useEffect. Both these hooks are responsible for providing a simple and intuitive API to write clean code.
What is Redux?
Redux is a state management library that manages the complete state of the application predictably. Redux is often used with React as it provides a centralized store for managing state across applications.
There is a strict unidirectional data flow in Redux and its core concepts include actions, reducers, and a global store.
Redux mostly comes into play where management of large-scale applications is required. Due to unidirectional data flow, it is easier to centralize and control the state enabling effortless debugging and understanding of data flow.
Differences Between React Hooks and Redux
Here are the core differences between React Hooks and Redux.
- State Management
Hooks can handle the local state in individual parts. This implies that each component can individually use useState, and there’s no built-in method to share or sync that state across multiple components.
If state is confined to small or medium scales for parts or sub-trees, Hooks are a simple solution to it.
On the other side, Redux stores global state and makes them available to components in the application. This is much more suitable for larger applications which have small components that need data shared across the interface.
- Complexity
With Hooks, the procedure of dealing with the state in functional components is less difficult. Because React Hooks exist in components, they encapsulate the state logic to the UI logic, furnishing better code readability.
However, when there’s a need to share the state between multiple components, passing the state as props can be inconvenient and result in prop drilling.
Whereas Redux can accommodate more intricate state operations and you get more boilerplate code.’ Creating the actions, reducers, and stores can complicate the project since it is not everyone’s requirement to manage the global state.
- Use Case Scenarios
The React Hooks are developed for small to medium-sized applications. These hooks can work perfectly where state management is mostly local to individual components.
In such cases, Hooks provides a simple yet elegant solution for managing the state with minimal overhead.
As far as Redux is concerned, use it where the large-scale applications are under discussion. In such projects, global state management is required and Hooks is not a good choice for this. Redux is the best choice for having a structured and scalable approach to managing complex tasks.
- Performance
Certain Hooks enable the developers to optimize the component rendering and side effects such as useEffect. Since React Hooks manages the state locally while causing less performance impact for smaller applications.
On the other hand, Redux is bound to perform in large-scale applications by centralizing the state and updating only the necessary components. It reduces the unnecessary render and ultimately enhances the performance.
Conclusion
Both React Hooks and Redux are equally important in their given roles. Both are designed to solve different problems. React Hooks are ideal for managing local states within small-scale applications. Redux shines where one has to manage the global state in large-scale applications.
