React documentation: how to read it

“React docs” and “react documentation” both point to the same address, react.dev, the official documentation split into guides, API reference and community.

Three sections, three uses

• Learn React: a guided path that builds a game and explains state, effects and events from the start.
• Reference: the signature of every hook and component, with the edge cases stated page by page.
• Community: conferences, courses and outside resources, with no version guarantee.

Check the version first

npm ls react react-dom
npm view react version

react.dev describes the latest stable release, today version 19. If your project is still on 17 or 18, some pages describe APIs you do not have: for those versions the historical documentation lives at legacy.reactjs.org, with MIT code and CC BY 4.0 content.

How to read a reference page

Start with the signature: parameters, return values and type. Then read the pitfall box, which lists common mistakes better than any tutorial. Only then look at the examples, and check whether they use hooks or APIs your version has. Reference pages are short because they do not tell the story of a whole project.

What the documentation does not say

It does not say how much a component weighs in your bundle, whether a third-party library is compatible, or how fast your page is. The documentation describes the API contract, not the behaviour of your product: numbers need a measured build and a browser profile.

A live record

In the EneUI catalogue documentation becomes interface: navigation-menu and sidebar are React components on Radix primitives under the MIT licence. To browse by category start from 111,985 components.

The limitation

There is no versioned documentation for every release: react.dev follows the stable version and older ones stay on a separate site that no longer receives updates. Search results also mix answers from ten years ago with questions asked today, so the date matters more than the vote count.

Where to continue

Writing documentation for your own components is in how to document components; the code distribution model is in what shadcn/ui is; the comparison of headless primitives is in Radix, Base UI and React Aria.