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Show HN: Reverse Engineering React.js Internals

2 pointsby aidenyb6 months ago
I’ve been exploring React.js internals and found them hard to access, so I reverse-engineered how React DevTools hooks into React and built a package: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;aidenybai&#x2F;bippy">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;aidenybai&#x2F;bippy</a><p>For a bit of context: React represents UI as a tree of &quot;fibers,&quot; which hold data like props, state, and context. React updates UI in two phases: render (building the fiber tree) and reconciliation (scheduling &amp; diffing fibers to update the DOM).<p>My tool works by simulating __REACT_DEVTOOLS_GLOBAL_HOOK__ to expose React internals without using DevTools:<p><pre><code> import { instrument, traverseFiberRoot} from &#x27;bippy&#x27;; instrument({ onCommitFiberRoot: traverseFiberRoot({ onRender(fiber) { console.log(fiber); }, }), }); </code></pre> I’ve found it pretty useful for detecting re-renders (I made a separate tool to highlight renders on the page <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;aidenybai&#x2F;react-scan">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;aidenybai&#x2F;react-scan</a>), but there are plenty other use cases for toy projects or learning how React works.<p>Happy hacking!

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