Code-Splitting

[idev0085]

Bundling is the process of following imported files and merging them into a single file: a “bundle”. This bundle can then be included on a webpage to load an entire app at once.

Bundling is great, but as your app grows, your bundle will grow too. Especially if you are including large third-party libraries. You need to keep an eye on the code you are including in your bundle so that you don’t accidentally make it so large that your app takes a long time to load.

To avoid winding up with a large bundle, it’s good to get ahead of the problem and start “splitting” your bundle. Code-Splitting is a feature supported by bundlers like Webpack, Rollup and Browserify (via factor-bundle) which can create multiple bundles that can be dynamically loaded at runtime.

dynamic import() ->. React.Lazy()

import React, { Suspense } from 'react';

const OtherComponent = React.lazy(() => import('./OtherComponent'));

function MyComponent() {
  return (
    <div>
      <Suspense fallback={<div>Loading...</div>}>
        <OtherComponent />
      </Suspense>
    </div>
  );
}

Error boundaries If the other module fails to load (for example, due to network failure), it will trigger an error. You can handle these errors to show a nice user experience and manage recovery with Error Boundaries. Once you’ve created your Error Boundary, you can use it anywhere above your lazy components to display an error state when there’s a network error.

import React, { Suspense } from 'react';
import MyErrorBoundary from './MyErrorBoundary';

const OtherComponent = React.lazy(() => import('./OtherComponent'));
const AnotherComponent = React.lazy(() => import('./AnotherComponent'));

const MyComponent = () => (
  <div>
    <MyErrorBoundary>
      <Suspense fallback={<div>Loading...</div>}>
        <section>
          <OtherComponent />
          <AnotherComponent />
        </section>
      </Suspense>
    </MyErrorBoundary>
  </div>
);

Route-based code splitting Deciding where in your app to introduce code splitting can be a bit tricky. You want to make sure you choose places that will split bundles evenly, but won’t disrupt the user experience.

A good place to start is with routes. Most people on the web are used to page transitions taking some amount of time to load. You also tend to be re-rendering the entire page at once so your users are unlikely to be interacting with other elements on the page at the same time.

Here’s an example of how to setup route-based code splitting into your app using libraries like React Router with React.lazy.

import React, { Suspense, lazy } from 'react';
import { BrowserRouter as Router, Route, Switch } from 'react-router-dom';

const Home = lazy(() => import('./routes/Home'));
const About = lazy(() => import('./routes/About'));

const App = () => (
  <Router>
    <Suspense fallback={<div>Loading...</div>}>
      <Switch>
        <Route exact path="/" component={Home}/>
        <Route path="/about" component={About}/>
      </Switch>
    </Suspense>
  </Router>
);