This Week In React 224
Next.js, TanStack Form, Astro, RTK, State Machine, Remix, StyleX | Lynx, Entreprise, SwiftUI, VisionOS, Windows, Hermes, Expo | Node.js, TypeScript, ArkType, Nitro, BetterAuth
Hi everyone!
This week we have:
React: A cool Next.js release improving the DX, and TanStack Form launching a stable v1.
React Native: The field is getting more competitive, with ByteDance, Callstack and early signals of Vercel mobile activity.
Other: TypeScript support keeps improving!
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As always, thanks for supporting us on your favorite platform:
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👽 Reddit
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⚛️ React
Vercel released a new minor version of Next.js, with major DX improvements. Highlights include:
Redesigned error UI and improved stack traces: A redesigned debugging experience leveraging the brand-new React
captureOwnerStack()APIStreaming metadata: Async metadata will no longer block page rendering or client-side page transitions
Turbopack performance improvements: Faster compile times and reduced memory usage
React View Transitions (experimental): Experimental support for React's new View Transitions API
Node.js Middleware (experimental): Experimental support for using the Node.js runtime in Middleware
A new TanStack library, years in the making, has just been released as stable. The announcement post highlights an interesting subset of its features:
Framework agnostic, headless: Supports 5 frameworks, including React used in the post's examples
Extreme type safety: I must admit
<form.Field>is a pretty cool APISchema validation: Support for Zod, Valibot, ArkType, Standard Schema
Async validation, built-in debouncing, AbortSignal
Isomorphic, multi-platform: share validation logic across client/server
💸 Clerk - Build session-based authentication with React and Express
👀 Rsbuild Plugin React Router - Epic Stack example: Did you know that Rsbuild can be used as an alternative to Vite for React Router framework mode? Yep, it can even run Kent’s favorite stack.
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📜 {transitions} = f(state): A rather philosophical article explaining that React can be seen as a state machine where the possible state transitions are implicitly defined by its event handlers. The asynchronous/concurrent nature of React makes it possible to introduce invalid state transitions that you should guard against explicitly.
📜 Building APIs with Next.js: New official guide from Lee Robinson, covering many cases and answering common questions.
📜 It's probably time to stop recommending Redux: Argues you probably don’t need a global state manager and can go a long way with an API cache +
useState.📜 Signals in React? Not a good idea: React doesn’t have first-class signal support on purpose, and relies on raw data.
📜 React, Solid, htmx: Part 2: The recent evolution of multiple frameworks, all pushing the web forward in their way.
📜 Building an InertiaJS app with Rails: A complete example of a seamless integration of a React frontend with a Rails backend through Inertia, without the need for an API.
📦 XState Store 3.0: I particularly like the new
store.triggerAPI that permits using the store more ergonomically, in particular for cases where event-driven indirection is not useful. This new version makes it an interesting alternative to Zustand, still lightweight but more opinionated, and a path toward adopting real XState state machines.📦 Isograph 0.3 - Modern GraphQL framework, support for Relay-style connections, fetch policies
📦 Astro 5.4 - Remote image optimization in Markdown, enhanced security for dev and preview servers
📦 React Hook Form Lenses - Focus on specific parts of your deeply nested form state
📦 StyleX 0.11 - Debugging, CLI caching and docs improvements
🎥 Jack Herrington - React’s New ViewTransition Component Is A Little Flakey
🎥 Alem Tuzlak - React Router just made your apps faster (splitRouteModules)
🎙️ This Month in React - CRA, React Router, RTK, TypeScript, Astro, Standard Schema
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📱 React-Native
ByteDance just announced Lynx, their native cross-platform technology. It’s used extensively in their production apps, including TikTok! With React bindings, it’s a serious competitor to React Native, and support for other frameworks is expected. The architectural choices are interesting, with a dual-thread model and different runtimes. It has support for some CSS and Web APIs that even React Native still doesn’t have and uses convenient built-in JSX intrinsic elements like <view>.
The feature set at launch is impressive, but there are also some surprising things you might dislike, such as using React 17 / Preact, or custom elements on the web. Time will tell whether the technology lives up to its promise and can truly compete with the established player. In any case, competition is healthy.
👀 Fernando Rojo joins Vercel as Head of Mobile: Interesting to see Vercel deploying resources in the React mobile/cross-platform space.
👀 React Native Framework for Enterprise: Callstack unveils plans to open source a new RN framework tailored for enterprise needs.
💬 Riccardo clarifies Hermes confusion: Compiling to native code is not ready for prime time, but we can expect a new version of Hermes with bytecode translation to land first.
📜 Exposing SwiftUI Views to React Native: An Integration Guide: Shows how to build a SwiftUI paywall in React Native that works for both architectures.
📜 Expo's AI Strategy: Democratizing app creation, expanding the audience of the Expo framework and EAS to include both human developers and AI agents.
📜 4 must-have Radon IDE features for convenient Expo development
📦 Re.Pack 5.0 - Mobile Microfrontends, 5x Faster, Less Configuration: This alternative bundler aims to be a drop-in alternative to Metro. The new version supports Rspack for speed, Module Federation 2 for microfrontends, and has plugins for Reanimated, Expo Modules, NativeWind.
📦 Metro 0.81.3 - Support resolving package.json import subpaths
🎥 Dan's Lab - Build Layouts By Instagram with Expo and React-Native
🎥 Beto - Master Expo Router API Routes | Handle Requests & Stream Data
🎥 Catalin Miron - Interactive Confetti Animation - Reanimated, Gestures & Skia!
🎙️ React Native Radio 323 - Static Hermes with Tzvetan Mikov
🎙️ React Universe On Air 49 - App Development With React Native Is Not Just Mobile, But Bigger
🔀 Other
👀 Node.js PR - Unflag TypeScrit support in v22: TypeScript support should be in a Node LTS version soon!
📜 Async, Sync, in Between: Using generators to create colorless functions, an interesting approach that reminds the Effect lib.
📦 TypeScript 5.8 -
erasableSyntaxOnly,require(esm), dependent return type narrowing: A flag you should probably turn on if you ever want to run TypeScript natively in Node!📦 Better Auth 1.2 - Stripe, Captcha, API Keys, Teams, Init CLI, and more
📦 Nitro 2.11 - Improved errors, dev serverabase support and more
🤭 Fun
See ya! 👋