How to Build a React Progressive Web Application?

Web Application

As we all are familiar the Progressive Web Application is became must-have technology for giant co-operate and small organizations. Many big brands use Progressive Web Application to boost their online presence.

Are you thinking of building a React Progressive Web Application?

At iByte, we help our clients to build their businesses by creating Progressive Web Applications.

We came here to provide a complete guide on how to build a React Progressive Web Application. And you will be going to see the most appropriate progressive web app examples.

Moreover, to understand more about the React Progressive Web Application, let`s understand about Progressive Web Application development definition and basics.

React Progressive Web Application

What are Progressive Web Applications?

Progressive Web Application or PWA is a web application, used to build to behave like native apps, operates offline-first. After that, it provides a cross-platform app that is easy going, inexpensive to build and maintain than a native app.

It is optimized for many viewports ranges from mobile, tablets to FHD desktop monitors and more. PWA is built using front-end technologies, for instance, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, it brings a native-like user experience to the web platform.

However, PWAs support such kind of functionality which is not accessible for regular websites. In addition, it also of consists access to geographic location, camera, mic, offline work, push notifications, etc.

In the other words, you will get many beneficial features that make your Web feel more native.

PWA development depends on a vast ecosystem of tools and frameworks for the Web, the developers of Android and iOS can only think of.

Through Progressive Web Apps, deployment and maintenance can be much easier. PWA offers a single version of the application which needs to be supported.

Progressive Web Application Development Basics :

Here are some web technologies that gives power to Progressive Web Application:-

  • service workers
  • web manifests
  • application shell
  • HTTP.

A service workers is a code that the browser processes in the background and also enables the online work of web applications. It intercepts and handles network requests, it behaves as an intermediary between your browser and the network.

On the other hand, PWA can be cached or use the cached files, which offers a smooth user experience.

It let web apps dynamically load as you navigate across the app and minimize data traffic.

Why choose to React for building a progressive web application?

In 2013, Jordan Walke originally created React.  It is an open-source JavaScript library for JavaScript building UI components.

It can be used as a root in the development of mobile applications.

Similarly, React helps to develop great and protractible web applications that support hot reloading, which means that your app will keep running meanwhile you are editing it at runtime. This feature is helpful valuable for adjusting the UI functionality.

Advantages of React for Progressive Web Application:-

Advantages of React Progressive Web Application

High Powered:

React is best in building fast and scale-out web applications and ignoring performance issues.  The issues related to the Document Object Model (DOM) manipulation are often experienced on JavaScript apps. Most importantly, the DOM is used to give the structural representation of your web page, it also allows programming languages to interact with it.

In the same vein, to make changes to the UI without redesigning the full page and rendering issues React uses virtual issues.

Easy to learn

React supports JSX, a syntax extension that allows writing HTML-like syntax in your JavaScript code. However, it is not necessary for you to use JSX in React, it could be a decent way for your convenience.

In the other words, you can use HTML & CSS and Javascript to build a React Progressive Web Application.

SEO-friendly

The SEO-related issues are common, failures of Web Rendering Service whenever you are working with heavy web applications, because all of this your website can not rank in Google search results. However, with the use of virtual DOM, your context on React web applications will be indexed in the right way.

Let`s have a look at how to build a React Progressive Web App:

If you want to make your web application more engaging, easy to use, and fast, you are wondering how to build a React PWA for your existing web application.

In this below section, we are going to see the PWA development tutorial that will definitely help you out on how to make a React Progressive Web Application.

Step 1: Build a simple React app:

To build a simple React app, we will use the tool Create React App (CRA). This tool is very convenient for those who are new to building React PWAs. Likewise, it gives us access to use the latest JavaScript functionality.

With the help of CRA, you can easily install and bootstrap your application.

Step 2: Register a Service Worker:

CRA provides you with all the useful tools for building the React PWA. However, to make the React PWA runnable in offline mode, you have to configure the auto-generated service worker file and register it.

Step 3: Configure the Web Application Manifest:

In the next step, we will cover the setup of the PWA manifest, which is located in the manifest.json file in a public directory. Here, we need to alter the metadata which is responsible for the appearance.

Step 4: Test your PWA:

As we have learned how to build a React PWA.

Now, in this step, we will learn how to check the performance, accessibility, and compliance of our PWA test the Progressive Web Application, However, we will test the Progressive Web Application.

Step 1:

To test the PWA, we need to open Chrome DevTools from the ‘Inspect’ option by clicking the right menu on the page where we need to inspect.

In addition, we can use Control + Shift + C ( for windows, linux, chrome OS) or Command + Option + C (for macOS)

Step 2:

In the following step, go to the Lighthouse tab and click on the ‘Generate report’ button.

Therefore, always need to make sure that you have checked the ‘Progressive Web App’ box, whenever you generate a Lighthouse report.

You will get a list of the criteria that affect the app`s performance once the auditing has finished. This list will give you information about how to build a React PWA.

Advanced PWA Usage

We will show you some of the advanced usages of PWA enhance progressive web app.

Advanced PWA Usage

 

Adding shortcuts to React PWA

Shortcuts adding is the latest feature that puts the native and web apps closer.

It allows users to directly go into without any doubt or by long-pressing the app logo.

 

Conclusion

In this guide, we have told you about different topics about PWA and how to build React PWA. We have also discussed the exciting advanced features of PWA. PWA development takes into consideration to be more resource-effective.

At iByte, we really want to share our knowledge and professionalism in building high-end software. We hope that his blog will be useful for web development enthusiasts.

If you are wondering to build React PWA for your business, get professional assistance from our iByte React PWA Experts.

About Rafia Khan

Rafia Khan is a Technical Content Writer at iByte Infomatics. Frequently, she inscribes on technology, to look on when you're reading, makes perfect sense and you understand it properly. She delivers explanatory and error-free content with prowess hand in proofreading. Has experience in Technical Content Writing for more than 2yrs. What's engaging about her writing? She includes precise research and uncomplicated readability

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