React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. React enables users to create interactive UIs. Design simple views for each state in an application, and React will update and render just the right components when data changes. React is available free and open source under the MIT license.
It is suitable for making portable applications, with almost the same code for several platforms. You can access native features of the device or use an open source plug-in from the repository to create a local database and access the internal storage of the device. It is wonderful for the construction of a native application, through the use of standard web code. It is not recommended for enterprise applications.
React is a JavaScript user interface construction library that works well for:
Developing web apps with dynamic and complicated user interfaces.
creating reusable UI elements that may be used in other applications.
creating single-page applications with dynamic content updates that don't require a page reload.
The Virtual DOM's effective updating mechanism allows it to handle large volumes of data updates.
React, on the other hand, might be less suitable for:
Websites that are simple, stagnant, and have no interaction. Other libraries or simple HTML, CSS, and JavaScript may be a better fit in such circumstances.
Web sockets may be a better choice for applications that need real-time updates, such as chat or gaming apps.
When creating mobile apps, React Native is a better option.
Server side rendering only, as React is designed to run on the client side.
Cordova makes it very easy to develop apps for multiple platforms. The setup is very simple when it comes to creating a project, adding platforms, building and deploying apps. If you have a little mobile app development experience, all you need to know is HTML, CSS, Javascript and only a handful of cordova commands to get started with your hybrid app.
Cordova provides a simple solution to access any and all of the device features through native plugins. You have a host of third-party and cordova plugins available to use device features like filesystem, camera, health kit, location services etc. You can also write your very own plugins and use them for your cordova based apps.
Cordova is free to use! The only cost you will bear is the individual mobile platform developer program enrollment cost to deploy your apps to those platforms.
React is fantastic for building performant user interfaces. Our web app is snappy and great for our customers.
React has the philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well which is the view layer of the application. This makes it incredibly intuitive and flexible for developers to use.
React has lead the way in being able to write modular and structured code. It is a drastic improvement since the days of spaghetti jQuery code.
React has an unmatched community. The amount of tools and libraries available is fantastic, and there plenty of solutions available online for common problems.
Debugging React is challenging. Bugs in react code generate stack traces internal to React and it is often totally unclear how it relates to the code you actually wrote.
Relating your React elements to corresponding DOM elements is difficult. The intentional separation of virtual and actual DOM also makes it difficult to map the elements to the structures in the DOM. This is partially ameliorated by the use of the React dev tool, which provides a DOM-like view of the React elements, but the tool still does not provide a direct correspondence with the DOM that is often necessary to figure out why something isn't right.
Because JSX is React-specific and not a language feature, a special compilation process is necessary to convert JSX code to normal JS. Coming from a C++ background, compiling things doesn't bother me, but many JS developers are used to a less structured development.
React is just a bit of a different animal. I was avoiding it for the longest time. I thought for sure I would land on Vue or something else with a more approachable and familiar appearance. But after taking an online course in React, I started realize what people were raving about (and complaining about) and decided to implement it at our office for one of our products.
Since it's open-source and very popular, the community support for React and related tools and libraries is excellent. There are a lot of people using the same tools, and so issues tend to get fixed quickly and "recipes" are easy to come by. And since it's backed by Facebook, they have a dedicated engineering team working on the progression of React.
Apache Cordova is the mother of all other frameworks. The Ionic developed framework is well suited for development but most of their features are offered by paid services. As Apache Cordova is open source and has a license to modify it, it has no legal problems to work with it. Also, most well-known IDEs recognize the Apache Cordova snippets.
While this is a widely contested debate with various blog posts and benchmarks all over the place, its really a personal choice to determine what works for the team. Coming from a Angular 1.x background, I decided to try a new framework when Angular 2.x was announced and at that time React is gaining popularity and Vue hasn't taken off yet. Compared to Angular 1.x and Vue (hybrid of React and Angular) that split the logic from the html templates, I loved the way React breaks code into components using the jsx syntax. In my mind, this allows for cleaner components and easier maintenance
It has a positive impact in general. Cordova is really a great solution for web developers who want to bring their incredible ideas to devices, but they just do not have a lot of time to put into iOS and Android learning curves.
Our biggest benefit was that the management of images for multiple devices.
Developing with Cordova has drastically reduced the cost of cross-platform deployment.
