Best Practices in Component-Driven Design

Component-Driven Design (CDD) is an approach in modern UI frameworks that emphasizes the creation of reusable components. These components are self-contained pieces of UI that can be combined to create complex interfaces. This lesson outlines best practices to enhance usability, maintainability, and scalability of components.

• **Reusability**: Components should be designed to be reused across different parts of the application.
• **Separation of Concerns**: Each component should have a single responsibility and be decoupled from others.
• **Composition**: Components should be able to compose other components to create complex UIs easily.
• **Accessibility**: Components must be designed with accessibility in mind to ensure all users can interact with them.
• **Testing**: Components should be easily testable to ensure reliability.

3.1 Design Components for Reusability

Components should be generic enough to be reused in multiple contexts. Use props to configure component behavior.

        function Button({ label, onClick }) {
            return (
                <button onClick={onClick}>
                    {label}
                </button>
            );
        }
        

3.2 Maintain a Consistent Design

Follow a design system or style guide to ensure that all components share a common look and feel. This promotes visual coherence.

3.3 Use Composition over Inheritance

Prefer composing components instead of creating a complex inheritance hierarchy. This leads to clearer code.

        function Card({ children }) {
            return (
                <div className="card">
                    {children}
                </div>
            );
        }

        function UserProfile() {
            return (
                <Card>
                    <h2>User Name</h2>
                </Card>
            );
        }
        

3.4 Implement PropTypes or TypeScript

Validate the props passed to your components to ensure they receive the correct types and values.

        import PropTypes from 'prop-types';

        Button.propTypes = {
            label: PropTypes.string.isRequired,
            onClick: PropTypes.func.isRequired,
        };
        

3.5 Optimize for Performance

Use techniques like memoization and lazy loading to improve performance when dealing with large component trees.