How to build a website using React and Rest APIs (React basics explained)

React and TypeScript are powerful frameworks for building scalable, maintainable, and safe websites. React provides a flexible and component-based architecture, while TypeScript adds static typing to JavaScript, for clean and readable code. This article will guide you through setting up a simple website with React and TypeScript, covering the core concepts needed to get started.

Why Choose React with TypeScript?

TypeScript is popular among JavaScript developers because it can catch errors during development and make code easier to understand and refactor. The two are ideal for building modern, fast websites and applications with maintainable code that scales well.

** Check out the whole code on GitHub: https://github.com/alexiacismaru/techtopia/tree/main/frontend

Basic React concepts and how to use them to build a website

Let’s build a website for a fictional amusement park called Techtopia. We will show elements like attractions and where they are on the map, a landing page, or a loading page. In addition, we will also make it possible to add/delete elements of the page or to search for them based on a variable.

Setup

Create an empty React project by copying this into the terminal.

Then run the empty project and a new tab will open in the browser window.

Final project structure overview

Components

Components are elements of a webpage that can also be reused. They can be a part of the webpage, like the header or footer, or the entire page, like a list of users. It is just like a JavaScript function but returns a rendered element.

TSX

TSX is a file extension for TypeScript files that contains JSX syntax. With TSX you can write type-checked code with the existing JSX syntax.

Fragments

Fragments return multiple elements to a component. It groups the list of elements without creating extra DOM nodes.

We can use them to fetch the data from a Java backend (check out how to build the Java application from this article: https://medium.com/@alexia.csmr/using-bounded-contexts-to-build-a-java-application-1c7995038d30). Start by installing Axios and using the base backend URL from your application. Then, we will create a fragment that uses GET to fetch all the attractions.

This can be expanded to getting data based on parameters, POST, DELETE, etc.

State

The state is a React object that contains data or information about the component. A component’s state can change over time and when it does, the component re-renders.

To get a single element from a list based on a parameter you can use the useParams() hook.

Hooks

As seen above, I’ve used_ useAttractions() and _useTagsAttractions(). They are hooks and can be personalized to get any data you want. In this example, they fetch the attractions based on their ID _or _tags. Hooks can only be called inside React function components, can only be called at the top level of a component, and can’t be conditional.

isLoading and isError

For a better UI experience, it’s good to let the user know what’s happening i.e. the elements are loading, or there has been an error when doing so. They are first declared in the hook and then introduced in the component.

You can also create a separate Loader or Alert component for a more customized website.

Now, when the page is loading the user will see a special animation on the screen.

Mapping items (Lists and Keys)

If you want to display all the elements in a list then you need to map through all of them.

More here you can create a type to later add more attractions using a form:

Adding items

We already created the fragments and hooks needed for this, so now we can make a form where the user can write the attributes and add a new attraction to the webpage. This form was created using the MUIframework. First I’ll show the whole code and explain it in sections.

If you want to make the form a pop-up instead of a separate page, add isOpen() and isClosed() attributes. onSubmit() is mandatory since this will trigger the createPOI() function and add a new object to the list.

For user form validation we will install and import Zod. Here declare what format the input needs to be and if there are any requirements like minimum or maximum length.

Inside the component, we need to implement the submit and the user validation.

The errors will be implemented in the TextField of the form with any other attributes.

Make sure that the form can be closed and submitted in the beginning.

You can implement this pop-up in another component.

Deleting items

Create a hook that uses DELETE and implement it in a component.

Include it when iterating through the list of items.

Conclusion

Using React with TypeScript enables you to build dynamic, safe websites that are easy to maintain and scale. TypeScript’s type-checking prevents runtime errors, while React’s component-based structure organizes the project efficiently.

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