---
title: "Community Round-up #2"
author: [vjeux]
---

Since the launch we have received a lot of feedback and are actively working on React 0.4. In the meantime, here are the highlights of this week.

## Some quick thoughts on React {#some-quick-thoughts-on-react}

[Andrew Greig](http://www.andrewgreig.com/) made a blog post that gives a high level description of what React is.

> I have been using Facebook's recently released JavaScript framework called React.js for the last few days and have managed to obtain a rather high level understanding of how it works and formed a good perspective on how it fits in to the entire javascript framework ecosystem.
>
> Basically, React is not an MVC framework. It is not a replacement for Backbone or Knockout or Angular, instead it is designed to work with existing frameworks and help extend their functionality.
>
> It is designed for building big UIs. The type where you have lots of reusable components that are handling events and presenting and changing some backend data. In a traditional MVC app, React fulfils the role of the View. So you would still need to handle the Model and Controller on your own.
>
> I found the best way to utilise React was to pair it with Backbone, with React replacing the Backbone View, or to write your own Model/Data object and have React communicate with that.
>
> [Read the full post...](http://www.andrewgreig.com/637/)

## React and Socket.IO Chat Application {#react-and-socketio-chat-application}

[Danial Khosravi](https://danialk.github.io/) made a real-time chat application that interacts with the back-end using Socket.IO.

> A week ago I was playing with AngularJS and [this little chat application](https://github.com/btford/angular-socket-io-im) which uses socket.io and nodejs for realtime communication. Yesterday I saw a post about ReactJS in [EchoJS](http://www.echojs.com/) and started playing with this UI library. After playing a bit with React, I decided to write and chat application using React and I used Bran Ford's Backend for server side of this little app.
> <figure><a href="https://danialk.github.io/blog/2013/06/16/reactjs-and-socket-dot-io-chat-application/"><img src="../images/blog/chatapp.png"></a></figure>
>
> [Read the full post...](https://danialk.github.io/blog/2013/06/16/reactjs-and-socket-dot-io-chat-application/)

## React and Other Frameworks {#react-and-other-frameworks}

[Pete Hunt](http://www.petehunt.net/blog/) wrote an answer on Quora comparing React and Angular directives. At the end, he explains how you can make an Angular directive that is in fact being rendered with React.

> To set the record straight: React components are far more powerful than Angular templates; they should be compared with Angular's directives instead. So I took the first Google hit for "AngularJS directive tutorial" (AngularJS Directives Tutorial - Fundoo Solutions), rewrote it in React and compared them. [...]
>
> We've designed React from the beginning to work well with other libraries. Angular is no exception. Let's take the original Angular example and use React to implement the fundoo-rating directive.
>
> [Read the full post...](https://www.quora.com/Pete-Hunt/Posts/Facebooks-React-vs-AngularJS-A-Closer-Look)

In the same vein, [Markov Twain](https://twitter.com/markov_twain/status/345702941845499906) re-implemented the examples on the front-page [with Ember](http://jsbin.com/azihiw/2/edit) and [Vlad Yazhbin](https://twitter.com/vla) re-implemented the tutorial [with Angular](http://jsfiddle.net/vla/Cdrse/).

## Web Components: React & x-tags {#web-components-react--x-tags}

Mozilla and Google are actively working on Web Components. [Vjeux](http://blog.vjeux.com/) wrote a proof of concept that shows how to implement them using React.

> Using [x-tags](http://www.x-tags.org/) from Mozilla, we can write custom tags within the DOM. This is a great opportunity to be able to write reusable components without being tied to a particular library. I wrote [x-react](https://github.com/vjeux/react-xtags/) to have them being rendered in React.
> <figure><a href="http://blog.vjeux.com/2013/javascript/custom-components-react-x-tags.html"><img src="../images/blog/xreact.png"></a></figure>
>
> [Read the full post...](http://blog.vjeux.com/2013/javascript/custom-components-react-x-tags.html)

## React TodoMVC Example {#react-todomvc-example}

[TodoMVC.com](http://todomvc.com/) is a website that collects various implementations of the same basic Todo app. [Pete Hunt](http://www.petehunt.net/blog/) wrote an idiomatic React version.

> Developers these days are spoiled with choice when it comes to selecting an MV* framework for structuring and organizing their JavaScript web apps.
>
> To help solve this problem, we created TodoMVC - a project which offers the same Todo application implemented using MV* concepts in most of the popular JavaScript MV* frameworks of today.
> <figure><a href="http://todomvc.com/labs/architecture-examples/react/"><img src="../images/blog/todomvc.png"></a></figure>
>
> [Read the source code...](https://github.com/tastejs/todomvc/tree/gh-pages/labs/architecture-examples/react)

## JSX is not HTML {#jsx-is-not-html}

Many of you pointed out differences between JSX and HTML. In order to clear up some confusion, we have added some documentation that covers the four main differences:

  - [Whitespace removal](/docs/jsx-is-not-html.html)
  - [HTML Entities](/docs/jsx-is-not-html.html)
  - [Comments](/docs/jsx-is-not-html.html)
  - [Custom HTML Attributes](/docs/jsx-is-not-html.html)