# react-lifecycle-methods-diagram: an interactive React lifecycle chart you can read with a keyboard > A Vite and React 19 app that turns Dan Abramov's lifecycle chart into a clickable, screen-reader-friendly page, plus notes on how to run it locally and where it stops being the right tool. **wojtekmaj/react-lifecycle-methods-diagram** — Interactive React Lifecycle Methods diagram. - Repository: https://github.com/wojtekmaj/react-lifecycle-methods-diagram - Website: https://projects.wojtekmaj.pl/react-lifecycle-methods-diagram/ - Stars: 3,930 · Forks: 327 - Language: TypeScript - License: MIT - Published: 2026-09-23 · Updated: 2026-09-23 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/wojtekmaj-react-lifecycle-methods-diagram ## What the diagram solves, and who actually needs it React's class component lifecycle is a sequence with branches: mounting runs constructor, render, then commit, and updating can run either the render path or the shouldComponentUpdate short circuit. Prose explains this badly. A chart explains it well, which is why Dan Abramov's tweeted diagram circulated so widely. This project is that chart rebuilt as a web page, and the README is explicit about the lineage: it calls itself "An interactive version of React Lifecycle Methods diagram tweeted by Dan Abramov" and adds, dryly, "Built with React, obviously." The audience is narrow and specific. People preparing for interviews that still ask about componentDidMount, people maintaining class components in a codebase that predates hooks, and instructors who need a visual they can point at during a lesson. The README also states the project's own priority: "I did my best to make the diagram fully accessible, both for keyboard navigation and screen readers for visually impaired people." That sentence is the strongest signal about intent. An accessible version of a diagram is a different artifact from a PNG, because the information has to survive being read linearly rather than looked at. ## How the page is put together: Vite, React 19, and a versions folder The repository is a small single-page app. package.json shows Vite as the build tool, with vite build and vite serve behind the build and dev scripts, and @vitejs/plugin-react handling the JSX transform. React and ReactDOM are both at ^19.2.4. TypeScript is a dev dependency and the test script is a chain of checks rather than a test runner: "test": "yarn lint && yarn tsc && yarn format", which runs Biome lint, the TypeScript compiler, and Biome format in sequence. Two directories carry the domain logic. src/i18n holds translations, and the README points at a separate i18n guide at /src/i18n/README.md, noting that adding a new locale "is pretty easy" but that a guide exists "in case you get lost." src/versions holds diagram versions, with its own guide at /src/versions/README.md, and the README frames it as the escape hatch for the day React's lifecycle changes: "You can also add a new version of the diagram in case React lifecycle methods are changed." That is the architecture in one line: the diagram is data keyed by React version, and the chrome around it is translatable. The dependency list backs this up, with @wojtekmaj/react-t for translation and country-code-to-flag-emoji plus get-user-locale for picking a default language from the visitor's environment. ## Reading the diagram: bold methods, italics, and links to the docs The README gives three rules for reading it, and they are worth repeating because they are the whole interaction model. Clicking any method name opens its official documentation in a new tab. Methods shown in bold are the most common ones. Actions that are not methods but help the reading, such as the render and commit phases, are in italics. That third rule matters more than it looks: without it, a reader can mistake a phase label for a callable method and go looking for a commit() API that does not exist. The interaction is deliberately thin. There is no editor, no live component to mount, and no console output. The page is a reference, and the only state it manages is which version of the diagram you are viewing and which language you are reading it in. If you want to see lifecycle methods fire in order, this is not that tool, and the README never claims it is. ## Running it locally with yarn dev The README's collaboration section lists the prerequisites as Node.js, Yarn, and an IDE of your choice. The package manager is pinned in package.json as yarn@4.17.1, so install through Yarn rather than npm if you want the lockfile to behave. There is no published package to install, so the local route is cloning the repository and running the two documented commands. The first is the one-time install, which also triggers husky through the postinstall script. ```bash yarn install ``` The second starts the Vite dev server. Note that the script is yarn dev, which maps to vite serve, not to a create-vite style command with flags. ```bash yarn dev ``` Vite prints a local URL in the terminal, typically on port 5173, and opening it shows the diagram. From there, clicking a method name jumps to the React documentation for that method, and the language selector changes the surrounding labels rather than the method names themselves. To check a production build, the README gives a third command: ```bash yarn build ``` If you want to preview that output before deploying, package.json defines a preview script that runs vite preview, though the README does not mention it. ## Contributing a language or a new diagram version This is the part of the project with real maintenance work behind it, and the README treats it as the main way to help. Two guides are linked, one for i18n and one for versions, and the author states plainly that translations are where contributions are most valuable: "Particularly valuable contributions are those regarding i18n as I only know so many languages." The practical consequence is that the diagram's coverage across languages is uneven, and if your locale is missing, the fix is a pull request rather than a config flag. The versions guide is the more consequential of the two for anyone outside the project. React's lifecycle has been stable for class components for years, so the versions folder may look like dead weight until it is not. The README's framing is forward-looking: add a version when the methods change. That is also the honest limit of the project. It documents the lifecycle as React defines it, and when React changes that definition, someone has to sit down and redraw. ## Where this diagram is the wrong tool The clearest limitation is the subject matter itself. The diagram is about class component lifecycle methods, and the README never mentions hooks, useEffect, or functional components. If you are writing function components, the chart will teach you a model you do not use, and the mapping from componentDidMount to a useEffect with an empty dependency array is exactly the kind of nuance a static diagram cannot carry. The search phrases people use around this project lean the same way, toward class components and lifecycle hooks as separate topics, which suggests the confusion is common rather than rare. The second limitation is that it is a reference, not a debugger. There is no instrumentation, no logging, and no way to point it at your own component. For that you need React DevTools or a profiler, and this project does not compete with them. The third is subtler: accessibility work is claimed in the README, but the README does not describe how it is implemented or how it was verified, so if you depend on screen reader support for a training session, test it with your own assistive technology before the session rather than after. ## Alternatives, and what changes when you switch The obvious alternative is the original static image from Dan Abramov's tweet, which the README credits. The difference is not cosmetic. An image is one artifact that scales and prints and pastes into slides, and it needs no build step, no Node version, and no Yarn. This project trades all of that for clickable method names that open the official documentation, a language switcher, and a structure that screen readers and keyboards can traverse. If you are printing a handout for a classroom, the image wins. If you are building an internal onboarding page and want the method names to link somewhere useful, the interactive version wins. The other alternative is reading the React documentation directly. That is the source of truth, and the diagram's clicking behavior sends you there anyway. What the diagram adds is the ordering and the branching, which the docs spread across several pages. What it cannot add is currency: the docs are updated by the React team, and the diagram is updated when a contributor opens a pull request. ## Licence, maintenance, and the cost of keeping a fork The project is MIT licensed, stated in both the README and the license field of package.json. For most users that means you can copy the source, modify it, and ship it in a commercial internal tool without a conversation, though the usual MIT obligation to keep the copyright notice applies and this is not legal advice. There is no separate commercial tier, no dual licence, and no contributor licence agreement mentioned in the README. On maintenance, the facts are limited but clear. The repository is not archived, and the last push was on 2026-09-09, which is recent enough that the project is not dormant. There are no retrieved releases, so the version string in package.json, 1.0.0, is what you get; treat this as a source tree rather than a versioned dependency. The upgrade cost for a fork is mostly the toolchain: Vite, TypeScript, Biome, and React all move, and the test script will tell you when they break. The content cost is the real one. Every React version you want to support is a folder under src/versions, and every language is a folder under src/i18n, and neither updates itself. ## Conclusion Adopt it if you teach or review class component lifecycles and want a diagram whose method names link to the official docs, or if you want to contribute a locale or a new React version through the guides in src/i18n/README.md and src/versions/README.md. Do not adopt it as a reference for functional components or hooks: the README and the search phrases around it both point at class methods, and the diagram covers what it covers. Before relying on a local copy, verify the React version the diagram is drawn for, check whether your language is already in src/i18n, and confirm that yarn install and yarn dev run clean on your Node version. ## FAQ ### What is a React lifecycle, and how does react-lifecycle-methods-diagram show it? The diagram presents the sequence of class component lifecycle methods as an interactive chart, with methods in bold marking the most common ones and non-method actions such as phases shown in italics. Clicking a method name opens its official React documentation in a new tab. ### Does react-lifecycle-methods-diagram cover lifecycle methods in functional components? No. The README describes the project as an interactive version of the React Lifecycle Methods diagram and does not mention hooks, useEffect, or functional components anywhere. The chart is about class component methods. ### How do I run react-lifecycle-methods-diagram locally? The README lists Node.js and Yarn as prerequisites, then yarn install once and yarn dev to start the project, with yarn build for a production build. The package manager is pinned to yarn@4.17.1 in package.json. ### Can I add a new language or a new React version to react-lifecycle-methods-diagram? Yes. The README links a separate i18n guide at /src/i18n/README.md for new locales and a versions guide at /src/versions/README.md for adding a diagram version when React lifecycle methods change. ### Is react-lifecycle-methods-diagram accessible with a keyboard and screen reader? The README states that the author did their best to make the diagram fully accessible for keyboard navigation and for screen readers used by visually impaired people. It does not describe the implementation or how that support was verified. ## Sources - [Issues](https://github.com/wojtekmaj/react-lifecycle-methods-diagram/issues) - [License: MIT](https://github.com/wojtekmaj/react-lifecycle-methods-diagram/blob/main/LICENSE) - [Project website](https://projects.wojtekmaj.pl/react-lifecycle-methods-diagram/) - [README](https://github.com/wojtekmaj/react-lifecycle-methods-diagram/blob/main/README.md) - [wojtekmaj/react-lifecycle-methods-diagram on GitHub](https://github.com/wojtekmaj/react-lifecycle-methods-diagram) --- Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/wojtekmaj-react-lifecycle-methods-diagram