<commit_before># Overview

The React DevTools extension consists of multiple pieces:
* The **frontend** portion is the extension you see (the Elements tree, the Profiler, etc.).
* The **backend** portion is invisible. It runs in the same context as React itself. When React commits changes to e.g. the DOM, the backend is responsible for notifying the frontend by sending a message through the **bridge** (an abstraction around e.g. `postMessage`).

One of the largest performance bottlenecks of the old React DevTools was the amount of bridge traffic. Each time React commits an update, the backend sends every fiber that changed across the bridge, resulting in a lot of (JSON) serialization. The primary goal for the DevTools rewrite was to reduce this traffic. Instead of sending everything across the bridge, **the backend should only send the minimum amount required to render the Elements tree**. The frontend can request more information (e.g. an element's props) on demand, only as needed.

The old DevTools also rendered the entire application tree in the form of a large DOM structure of nested nodes. A secondary goal of the rewrite was to avoid rendering unnecessary nodes by using a windowing library (specifically [react-window](https://github.com/bvaughn/react-window)).

## Elements panel

### Serializing the tree

Every React commit that changes the tree in a way DevTools cares about results in an "_operations_" message being sent across the bridge. These messages are lightweight patches that describe the changes that were made. (We don't resend the full tree structure like in legacy DevTools.)

The payload for each message is a typed array. The first two entries are numbers that identify which renderer and root the update belongs to (for multi-root support). Then the strings are encoded in a string table. The rest of the array depends on the operations being made to the tree.

No updates are required for many commits because we only send the following bits of information: element type, id, parent id, owner id, name, and key. Additional information (e.g. props, state) requires a separate "_inspectElement_" message.

#### String table

The string table is encoded right after the first two numbers.

It consists of:

1. the total length of next items that belong to string table
2. for each string in a table:
  1. encoded size
  2. a list of its codepoints

For example, for `Foo` and `Bar` we would see:<commit_msg>Clarify encoding in overview<commit_after># Overview

The React DevTools extension consists of multiple pieces:
* The **frontend** portion is the extension you see (the Elements tree, the Profiler, etc.).
* The **backend** portion is invisible. It runs in the same context as React itself. When React commits changes to e.g. the DOM, the backend is responsible for notifying the frontend by sending a message through the **bridge** (an abstraction around e.g. `postMessage`).

One of the largest performance bottlenecks of the old React DevTools was the amount of bridge traffic. Each time React commits an update, the backend sends every fiber that changed across the bridge, resulting in a lot of (JSON) serialization. The primary goal for the DevTools rewrite was to reduce this traffic. Instead of sending everything across the bridge, **the backend should only send the minimum amount required to render the Elements tree**. The frontend can request more information (e.g. an element's props) on demand, only as needed.

The old DevTools also rendered the entire application tree in the form of a large DOM structure of nested nodes. A secondary goal of the rewrite was to avoid rendering unnecessary nodes by using a windowing library (specifically [react-window](https://github.com/bvaughn/react-window)).

## Elements panel

### Serializing the tree

Every React commit that changes the tree in a way DevTools cares about results in an "_operations_" message being sent across the bridge. These messages are lightweight patches that describe the changes that were made. (We don't resend the full tree structure like in legacy DevTools.)

The payload for each message is a typed array. The first two entries are numbers that identify which renderer and root the update belongs to (for multi-root support). Then the strings are encoded in a string table. The rest of the array depends on the operations being made to the tree.

No updates are required for many commits because we only send the following bits of information: element type, id, parent id, owner id, name, and key. Additional information (e.g. props, state) requires a separate "_inspectElement_" message.

#### String table

The string table is encoded right after the first two numbers.

It consists of:

1. the total length of next items that belong to string table
2. for each string in a table:
  1. encoded size
  2. a list of its UTF encoded codepoints

For example, for `Foo` and `Bar` we would see:
{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.05074081591231987, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0016237061091942358, 'mean_word_length': 4.475555555555555, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 3, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 3, 'https://': 2, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
{'dir': 'git-commits-cleaned', 'id': '4346657', 'n_tokens_mistral': 1161, 'n_tokens_neox': 1129, 'n_words': 772}