React Hooks and
Redux are both powerful libraries that can make your codebase cleaner and easier to maintain. But the two libraries have some pretty fundamental differences.
In this article, we’ll learn about the pros and cons of each library and which one is a better fit for your project. Let’s dive in! Redux is an extremely popular state management library built with ES6 modules, which makes it easy to debug, monitor performance, and avoid scope creep. It allows you to track the state of your application at any given time, so if something goes wrong or new data is received, you can easily go back to a previous state.
What are React Hooks?
React Hooks is a JavaScript library that enables us to write cleaner, more reusable code by connecting the components of our application together with functionalities and data flow. Because of its lightweight nature, we can write complex logic in a few lines of code and it can be easily extended with no need to write a whole new app or a library. With hooks, we can also write our application in a functional way, which means that every component doesn’t depend on some global state; instead, it only depends on itself (or the data it receives from the parent component). Hooks can be used with any state management solution, but they were built to work seamlessly with React. They are a relatively new feature built into React, which means you have to use a specific version of React to use them. The latest version of React used is 16.8.
What is Redux?
Redux is a state management library to help build scalable and robust applications. It stores the state in one place, and then lets you access it from anywhere. The state is described with a plain object, which makes it easier to reason about it. The state is usually stored in the memory, but it can also be saved to a remote server if needed. When the state changes, it can be broadcasted to other parts of the application, so that they can “re-render” the data accordingly.
Key Differences Between Hooks and Redux
| Theme | Hooks | Redux |
|---|---|---|
| State Management | React Hooks don’t have a state management built in, so you have to choose either a stateless or a stateful approach. | Redux, is a state management solution with a built-in state container. |
| Developer Experience: | In React hooks, you have to choose the best practices and specific tools to provide a similar experience. | Redux provides a great developer experience out of the box |
| Complexity | React Hooks are a new feature with a limited adoption. It will take some time for the community to agree on best practices. | Redux is a more complex library that has been used in production for years. |
| Composability | As React Hooks are stateless, they are easier to compose with other functions. This makes it easier to create larger reusable components that have only one responsibility. | Redux is difficult to compose with other functions. |
| Flexibility | React Hooks are more flexible than Redux. This means that you don’t have to worry about how the state is managed, which makes it easier to reason about the application. | Redux is less flexible than React Hooks. |
| Performance | React Hooks don’t need to manage their own state. They can just use the props passed from the parent component. | Redux manages its own state and that makes it less performant than React hooks. |
| Testability | It is easier to test React Hooks because you no longer have to worry about managing state. You can just test the render method and expect a response. | For Redux you have to pass your own state down through the store function and make sure that it gets updated as expected. |
| Community Support | React Hooks have a growing community that provides answers on Stack Overflow and other online forums. | As there isn’t a large community around Redux, it is harder to find answers when you run into problems or questions related to its usage. |
| Documentation | React Hooks has an excellent documentation that covers every little detail about its usage and best practices related to its implementation in your application. | The documentation for Redux is pretty good but there are still some issues with it in regards to how it handles asynchronous actions and how it handles errors in general. |
Final Verdict:
It’s almost impossible to choose one over another because they both provide similar benefits while being different enough in terms of complexity and adoption by developers that they can be used together in a single application without causing any issues.
Hooks vs Redux: Which one to choose?
Now that we’ve learned about the differences between React Hooks and Redux, let’s try to answer the question: which one to choose? We can’t say that you should always choose one over the other, as they are great tools that complement each other. If you are just beginning with React development, we recommend that you start with React Hooks and avoid using Redux because it requires a more experienced developer to use it effectively. If, however, you are building a large application, you should choose Redux. It’s less suitable for small applications because the state is stored in one place, so if the state changes, every part of the application has to be re-rendered. Another thing to keep in mind is that if you are using a Functional Programming (FP) approach, you might want to use React Hooks. They are designed to work seamlessly with FP. Redux, on the other hand, is not created for FP.
Redux and React Hooks are both excellent libraries for building modern web applications with React, but there are some differences between them:
- Redux is more suitable for building single page applications with complex data structures and large application architectures .
- It offers more flexibility with regards to scaling and has better documentation .
- React Hooks are great when you need to do some custom logic in your components or when you need some hooks into your system.
They don't really offer any advantages over Redux, but they do make things easier when working on bigger projects. For most of our applications, we will probably only use React Hooks (or just React), so we don't have any special reason to choose between them. We'll start by using Redux, as it's more common among beginners and people who have used it before might not be familiar with React Hooks yet -- especially if they're using older versions of React (like 0.14).
Conclusion
React Hooks and Redux are both powerful libraries that can make your codebase cleaner and easier to maintain. But the two libraries have some pretty fundamental differences. In this article, we’ve learned about the pros and cons of each library and which one is a better fit for your project. Now that you know the benefits of each library, you can decide which one is best for your project.
If you are preparing for React interviews the above difference is most likely to be asked for both freshers and experienced candidates.
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