Summary

In this chapter, we have described and implemented various React component lifecycle methods. Knowing how the lifecycle perpetuates itself is critical to architecting React components that are anything larger and more complex than a couple of static boilerplate components. Moreover, it is worth understanding how the lifecycle flows adding additional functionality of events as appropriate. For example, knowing about the lifecycle allows us to determine the best place to add in functionality such as making external AJAX calls that should modify the state without doing something that would affect the rendering pipeline for the component. This is something that is borderline required for mastery of writing smart React components.

If you remember the basic flow of implementing lifecycle methods, as mentioned in the chapter, you will have enough information to get you through most of the React components that you write in your lifetime. In the next chapter, we will look at class and functional components in React.