What it is
React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces out of components. Each component describes what a piece of the screen should look like for a given state, and React works out what to change in the page when that state changes. It was built at Facebook, now Meta, and released as open source.
React only handles the view. Routing, data fetching and builds come from the wider ecosystem, which is why it pairs with tools like Vite and Next.js. The same component model carries over to phones through React Native, so one team can think the same way on the web and in a field app.
How I use it
- The Rental Pilot web app and customer portal are React, built and served from S3 through CloudFront.
- A React web app replaced the legacy CodeIgniter UI screen by screen, and the old UI was retired in October 2026 with no maintenance window.
- Every web deploy builds, syncs to S3, invalidates CloudFront and runs a smoke suite against production before it counts as done.
- Lend Pilot's front end is React 18 with Vite, talking to a Node and Express API.
- The Rail & Sail Montessori House site is React 18 under Next.js 14, statically exported.
React is the right tool when a screen has a lot of state that changes as people work: a dispatch board, a billing queue, an agreement with dozens of lines. I reach for it because components let me rebuild an old system one screen at a time, and because the same habits carry straight into the React Native field app.
Questions
Can you move a legacy PHP app to React without downtime?
Yes. Rental Pilot's CodeIgniter UI was replaced by a React web app one screen at a time while the business kept running. The old UI was retired in October 2026 with no maintenance window.
Do you build the React app and the hosting?
Yes. I build the app and run the AWS underneath it: S3, CloudFront, DNS and the deploy script. Each deploy ends with a smoke suite run against production.