React Hooks in Action

technical book report

Why Did I Buy it?

For my day job I work mostly on Vue and Angular so I've really fallen behind on the latest in React. All that I have ever heard is that hooks were a really big deal.

I wanted to catch up quick to find out what all the fuss was about. Since this book is just about the hooks feature, it was the focused material that I was looking for.

Summary;

Hooks let you access your application's state and React itself using just functions. This book walks you step-by-step, developing a scheduling app, to show you how to use hooks to simplify your React code.

React Hooks in Action

React Hooks in Action $34 (paperback)

chapters

  1. React is evolving
  2. Managing component state with the useState hook
  3. Managing component state with the useReducer hook
  4. Working with side effects
  5. Managing component state with the useRef hook
  6. Managing application state
  7. Managing performance with useMemo
  8. Managing state with the Context API
  9. Creating your own hooks
  10. Using third party hooks
  11. Code splitting with Suspense
  12. Integrating data fetching with Suspense
  13. Experimenting with useTransition, useDeferredValue, and SuspenseList

Was it Worth the Money?

Yes

It covered the topic really well which is what you would expect for such a focused topic. Beyond that though instead of having goofy foo, bar, baz abstract examples it built on one app chapter-by-chapter. For me at least it was a really practical way to learn the different hooks and how you might actually use them in the wild. It was well organized and the quality of the diagrams and mockups were clear and simple.

Overall it is a really great resource for diving into hooks.

Rating

4/5

Really solid for a technical book that cost $35 at the time of this review.