React Best Practices

Component design

• Prefer functional components. Follow Single Responsibility: a component does one job; extract when it starts doing two.
• Avoid inline render functions/closures created fresh on every render inside JSX where they cause unnecessary child re-renders.

Hooks

• Follow the rules of hooks: only call at the top level, only from React functions/custom hooks.
• Use useState for local state, useEffect only for real synchronization with an external system (not for derived state).
• Extract repeated stateful logic into custom hooks (use*) instead of duplicating it across components.

State management strategy

• Start local (useState). Escalate to Context only when several components genuinely need the same state. Escalate to Zustand/Redux only when Context causes prop-drilling-scale re-render problems or the state is genuinely app-wide.
• Avoid prop drilling more than 1–2 levels — that's a signal to lift state or use Context/a store instead.

Data fetching

• Use React Query (or equivalent) for server-state data fetching and caching, rather than hand-rolled useEffect fetch + loading/error state.

Memoization

• Apply React.memo / useCallback / useMemo deliberately, where a profiled re-render or expensive computation justifies it — not by default on every component/function.

TypeScript

• Type props, state, and hook return values explicitly. No any — prefer unknown + narrowing, or a precise type/interface. Do not use PropTypes; TypeScript typing replaces it.

Testing & hygiene

• Test components with React Testing Library (behavior, not implementation detail).
• Strip console.* calls from production builds.
• List keys, accessibility, and error boundaries are real gaps to watch for and are left to team judgment/review rather than dictated here.

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Source: medium.com/@raveenpanditha — mastering-react-best-practices