📨 #203: Server Functions, DevTools, Next.js, React-Query, React Router, React-Aria, Vaul, Remotion, Skia, Native Tabs, Godot, CodePush, void(0), Oxc, Node.js, Tauri...

October 1, 2024 · 10 min read

Sébastien Lorber

Newsletter Editor - Docusaurus maintainer

Hi everyone!

This week we have a lot of interesting news and releases!

There's notably an important terminology change for Server Actions, and a preview of upcoming React DevTools v6.

On the React Native side we also have a broad set of interesting news and previews of exciting packages!

Also, my meme game is back. You'll understand at the end 😂

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⚛️ React

Server Actions have been renamed to Server Functions

It’s not a code change, but it’s an impactful terminology change that is now officially published on the React v19 docs site. Server Actions are now considered a subset of a broader Server Function feature. It only becomes an action when used within:

<form action>
useActionState()
startTransition()

This change clarifies that “use server” is about exposing a server endpoint, not necessarily limited to mutations. Fetching data and JSX with Server Functions might not be an anti-pattern after all.

About Next.js Server Actions: they use POST requests and run sequentially, but this is a Next.js implementation detail and React doesn’t prevent you from running actions in parallel. The Next.js team has confirmed their intention to introduce new APIs to call Server Functions with GET.

React DevTools 6.0

The React DevTools have been the focus of a lot of work recently, notably the ability to present a unified easy-to-understand React tree for Server and Client components. The browser extensions have not been published, but the v6 changelog is available with many PRs and screenshots to look at. From what I see, the team has done an incredible work to provide a great DX around element inspection, profiling, logging, stacktraces, sourcemaps.

💸 React Bricks - Transform React components into dynamic, visually editable bricks of content with the pioneering React Visual Headless CMS.
👀 Next.js PR - Update Dynamic APIs to be async: The PR we mentioned last week (turning APIs such as cookies(), headers() and searchParams async) has been merged and released in Next.js 15 canary 171. Libraries might have to adjust their code accordingly (nuqs) or introduce breaking changes (Clerk). Migration instructions will be provided very soon.
👀 Next.js PR - Add connection() as a new dynamic API: A new API to bail out of pre-rendering will replace unstable_noStore().
🐦 React Core - Lazy Context Propagation has been enabled for React 19 and React Native: This shouldn’t impact you directly, but it's an important implementation detail change that sets the stage for upcoming features to optimize React Context consumption.
🐦 React Router - Typesafety improvements preview: React Router will soon be able to generate types manually (CLI) or automatically (TS plugin) to improve type-safety.
🗓️ React-Brussels - 🇧🇪 Brussels - 18 October - Last call! You still have a chance to get your ticket, and don’t forget the 10% discount with code "TWIR".
🗓️ React Summit US - 🇺🇸 New-York - 19 & 22 December - 10% discount with code TWIR. Full line-up revealed!
📜 Cloudflare Builder Day 2024 - 18 big updates to the Workers platform: Cloudflare made relevant announcements for React devs. They improved Node.js compatibility and added support for Static Assets. They also joined the OpenNext initiative and published a new adapter to reduce Next.js vendor lock-in and to make it more portable outside Vercel without compromises.
📜 Level up your env var tooling in Next.js with DMNO: This interesting tool can help prevent leaking secrets in a modern React RSC world. It also supports Remix, Astro, and Vite.
📜 The unspoken rules of React hooks: Some functions returned by React (such as setState) are known to be stable and do not need to be added to dependency arrays. This rule is implicit and there’s no way for third-party libraries to declare their returned functions as stable.
📜 SSR-friendly Custom React Hook for Local Storage Read and Write: Reading localStorage with useSyncExternalStore is great and helps avoid hydration mismatches. But you have to work around storage events not firing for the current document.
📜 Intro to CSS animations for React developers: Interactive article that notably explains the problem with unmounting and animations.
📜 use() and data fetching: Moves data fetching from useEffect to an RSC, which also shows React’s ability to serialize promises.
📜 Reliable date formatting in Next.js: To avoid hydration mismatches, you need to use the same Date/timestamp, timezone, and locale across both client/server environments. next-intl gives you APIs to help you do so.
📜 Inverse Assertions: An interesting React Testing Library technique to assert a side effect did NT happen.
📜 Types of React Components: Documenting component types from 2013 to 2024.
📜 Proxy state management: MobX vs Valtio
📦 React Query 5.59 - Experimental support for use(): When using the new experimental_prefetchInRender option, the library will return a stable promise that you can use() making it easier to integrate with React 19 Suspense in a performant way. It’s more convenient than usePrefetchQuery and more parallel than useSuspenseQuery which can create waterfalls.
📦 Live Compositor - React renderer for mixing real-time livestreams: A new innovative product from Software Mansion provides live video and audio mixing capabilities similar to OBS through a familiar React interface. Open-source but requires a license for production usage.
📦 React Aria - September 30, 2024 Release - Color Pickers stable, Button pending state, Tree beta, Disclosure, DisclosureGroup (accordion)
📦 Vaul 1.0 - Drawer component for React - Rewritten, improved, new docs
📦 Framer-Motion 11.9 - useAnimate() mini, much smaller, built on top of WAAPI
📦 React-admin - October 2024 Update
🎥 Remotion on Shark Tank - Pitching a programming framework on TV: Remotion is the first React framework to pitch Shark Tank investors, and they even got an offer!
🎥 Delba - React explained: 'use client': Greatly explained, and another great usage of Remotion!
🎥 Theo - Next.js has real competition now (TanStack Start)
🎥 Jack Herrington - Legend State v3 - Local first sync and fastest React State manager
🎙️ This Month in React 2024-09 – Async Components, a React 19 cheatsheet, Static Hermes, and trademarks drama

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