React is a great tool for synchronizing data with views on the client side. However, to achieve perfect real-time experience one also needs to synchronize server data with client data. Unfortunately the nowadays widely used REST-like API is rather suited to one-time fetches, usually resulting in stale client data. Reactive databases such as Firebase seek to be the solution to this problem.
I will show how Firebase can be integrated with React (spoiler alert: it can be done in a beautiful way) to get what-you-see-is-what-it-really-is kind of UX and how the FLUX pattern helps us to keep database updates clean. Since Firebase-like databases are quite fresh and immature, you may get an inspiration for a nice Friday-night project here.

Tomas is a former university assistant professor at the Faculty of Informatics, Comenius University, Bratislava.
He found his passion as the founder
and CTO of VacuumLabs.