There is no official style guide for React

And we clearly miss it.

Style guides

Style guides associated with programming languages enhance code quality and code reuse.

When code follows a style guide it is easy to understand and to extend by anybody else who also follows the same style guide.

Usually a style guide incorporates industry best practices. It does without doubt, thus adopted by many, offering a true relief for its users.

React, unfortunately, has no official style guide provided by Facebook. This role is taken voluntarily by AirBnb, and it is questionable.

Just some bits:

• Use .jsx as file extension instead of .js — a suggestion with doubt, against the gut, at least for me personally.
• Pass params as list instead of array, which contradicts the loose coupling general coding principle.

// bad
function getFullName(user) {
  const firstName = user.firstName
  const lastName = user.lastName

  return `${firstName} ${lastName}`
}

// good
function getFullName(user) {
  const { firstName, lastName } = user
  return `${firstName} ${lastName}`
}

// best
function getFullName({ firstName, lastName }) {
  return `${firstName} ${lastName}`
}

As a conclusion I do not use any styleguide for now. I rather wait for the official styleguide to come out.

It’s not that the AirBnb styleguide is wrong. The fact is that even React itself doesn’t stick to it.

Update

• Dan Abramov explains why React has no official style guide.

Resources

• The AirBnb style guide with a contradictory best practice suggestion
• Coding with clarity

To React with best practices. Written by @metamn.