ReactJS is a declarative, efficient, and flexible JavaScript library for building reusable UI components. It is an open-source, component-based front end library responsible only for the view layer of the application. It was created by Jordan Walke, who was a software engineer at Facebook. It was initially developed and maintained by Facebook and was later used in its products like WhatsApp & Instagram. Facebook developed ReactJS in 2011 in its newsfeed section, but it was released to the public in the month of May 2013.

Today, most of the websites are built using MVC (model view controller) architecture. In MVC architecture, React is the ‘V’ which stands for view, whereas the architecture is provided by the Redux or Flux.

A ReactJS application is made up of multiple components, each component responsible for outputting a small, reusable piece of HTML code. The components are the heart of all React applications. These Components can be nested with other components to allow complex applications to be built of simple building blocks. ReactJS uses virtual DOM based mechanism to fill data in HTML DOM. The virtual DOM works fast as it only changes individual DOM elements instead of reloading complete DOM every time.

To create React app, we write React components that correspond to various elements. We organize these components inside higher level components which define the application structure. For example, we take a form that consists of many elements like input fields, labels, or buttons. We can write each element of the form as React components, and then we combine it into a higher-level component, i.e., the form component itself. The form components would specify the structure of the form along with elements inside of it.