Midu's Fullstack Bootcamp Deepens on React Router 7, Lazy Loading, and State Optimization

The recent session of Midu’s comprehensive fullstack bootcamp covered critical React development techniques, beginning with the useRef hook. Attendees explored useRef’s utility in storing mutable values that persist across renders without triggering re-renders, notably for managing setTimeout IDs in a debounce custom hook. The session also demonstrated useRef for directly accessing DOM elements, providing a React-idiomatic alternative to document.querySelector for manipulating input values and other element properties. A significant portion of the class emphasized the importance of URL synchronization in SPAs, addressing common pitfalls where application state doesn’t reflect URL parameters. The bootcamp showcased how to initialize component states, such as filters and pagination, directly from URL searchParams to ensure bookmarkable and shareable application states.

The core of the session transitioned to integrating React Router 7, replacing a custom routing solution to leverage its advanced features. Participants learned to implement BrowserRouter, define routes using Routes and Route components, and manage navigation programmatically with useNavigate. The class also covered extracting URL parameters with useParams, accessing location data via useLocation, and dynamically managing query parameters using useSearchParams. A key optimization technique introduced was Lazy Loading with React’s lazy and Suspense components, enabling on-demand loading of route-specific bundles to significantly reduce initial page load times and improve performance metrics. The session also tackled the rendering of HTML from Markdown content using dangerouslySetInnerHTML for dynamic job descriptions, highlighting its necessary security considerations. Looking ahead, the bootcamp will explore global state management with React Context and Zustan, with a focus on authentication flows.