Combining Architectural Patterns in React

Modern React systems often require UI elements far more complex than a simple button or form field. Components such as selects, steppers, command palettes, or data grids typically involve multiple behaviors, including state transitions, side-effect management, keyboard interaction, accessibility wiring, and highly flexible layouts. No single architectural pattern is sufficient on its own: relying solely on reducers can make the consumer-facing API unwieldy, using only headless hooks can push too much structural responsibility onto JSX, and depending entirely on compound components can create bloated parent components overloaded with logic.

The layered component architecture

Scalable architectures emerge by layering patterns together: each pattern assuming a dedicated responsibility. Reducers govern predictable transitions. Headless Hooks adapt that logic into reusable React behavior. Compound Components expose a clean, expressive API that reflects how developers naturally structure interfaces. This layering results in primitives that are both powerful and highly maintainable.

Complex UI primitives function best when structured as three coordinated layers, each depending only on the layer below it and maintaining a strict separation of responsibilities.

Think of an advanced component as a structured hierarchy of roles:

• The core (Reducer): Pure logic. It encapsulates behavioral rules and expresses state transitions as pure, testable logic. It determines what happens when events occur, but is unaware of DOM, JSX, or context.

• The adapter (Headless Hook): Bridges the reducer with React. It runs useReducer, manages side effects such as keyboard listeners or focus handling, and produces Prop Getters that unify internal and consumer-supplied events while maintaining accessibility attributes.

• The interface (compound components): The ...