I have been developing for WordPress for a while and I have been working with jQuery mostly.

Recently, I prepare for going to interview. As PHP dev, knowing Laravel and a JS framework is expected nowadays I guess. So I decided to create an app with Laravel and React to practice.

After a week, here it is:

https://youtu.be/6s5-EOaV6tI

You can play with it at https://piggyspastel.com

The app basically let you search through a list of images and generate a one-page PDF file so you can print and fill with color.

I sometimes play this with my daughter and we had a lot of fun.

Thinks I learnt

1. You don't get value at element but from a central object at the root component
   You need to plan your code quite a bit. For example, in jQuery, if you want to grab any input value, simply select that element and use val(). In react, my feeling is you need to store the value somewhere in the app (in the root component in the case of my app) and work on that value

2. Event handling quite strange
   In jQuery, if you want to add a listener to an event, simply bind the event handle to that element directly. However, in React, many times you need to pass the event handler to child components through props. This may cause some headache if the components are a few levels deep

I think I need a lot more practices to really understand the way React works and get familiar with it.

If you have any pointers that help me learn it faster, please share.

Thanks a lot!