My 2025 React Chat Implementation: 3 Game-Changing Tools

Tool 2: PartyKit - For Dead-Simple Real-time Backends

This is the real magic. Traditionally, adding real-time capabilities meant setting up a dedicated WebSocket server, managing connections, scaling, and writing a ton of boilerplate. It was a completely separate and often complex part of the stack.

Enter PartyKit: Your Backend in a TypeScript File

PartyKit is a framework for building real-time, collaborative apps that runs on Cloudflare Workers. It simplifies WebSockets to an almost unbelievable degree. You write a small server-side script that handles events like connections, messages, and disconnections for a specific “room.”

The best part? The server-side code feels like you're writing client-side event listeners.

Here’s a complete PartyKit server for a chat room. This file, `party/chat.ts`, is all you need for the backend:

import type * as Party from "partykit/server";

export default class ChatServer implements Party.Server {
  constructor(readonly party: Party.Party) {}

  // Handle incoming connections
  onConnect(conn: Party.Connection) {
    console.log(`Connected: ${conn.id}`);
    // Greet the new user
    conn.send("Welcome to the chat!");
  }

  // Handle incoming messages
  onMessage(message: string, sender: Party.Connection) {
    console.log(`Message from ${sender.id}: ${message}`);
    // Broadcast the message to everyone in the room (including the sender)
    this.party.broadcast(message);
  }
}

That's it. You deploy this with a single command, and you have a scalable, real-time WebSocket backend. No servers to manage, no complex setup.

On the client, you connect using their `usePartySocket` hook:

import usePartySocket from "partysocket/react";

function ChatRoom({ roomName }: { roomName: string }) {
  const [messages, setMessages] = React.useState<string[]>([]);

  const socket = usePartySocket({
    host: "your-project.username.partykit.dev",
    room: roomName,
    onMessage(event) {
      setMessages((prev) => [...prev, event.data]);
    },
  });

  const handleSubmit = (text: string) => {
    socket.send(text);
  };

  // ... UI to display messages and a form to send them
}

The simplicity is breathtaking. PartyKit completely abstracts away the complexity of real-time infrastructure.

Tool 3: shadcn/ui - For Beautiful, Composable Components

You can't have a great chat app without a great UI. But I've grown tired of traditional component libraries. They often come with heavy styling opinions, a large bundle size, and make customization a pain.

The shadcn/ui Philosophy: Own Your Code

`shadcn/ui` is different. It's not a component library. It's a collection of beautifully designed, accessible components built with Radix UI (for behavior) and Tailwind CSS (for styling) that you install directly into your project.

You use a CLI command to add the components you need:

npx shadcn-ui@latest add button
npx shadcn-ui@latest add input
npx shadcn-ui@latest add card

This command doesn't add a dependency to `package.json`. It copies the component source code right into your codebase (e.g., into a `/components/ui` folder). You now own it. You can change anything you want—the styling, the logic, anything.

This approach gives you:

• Maximum Control: Tweak components to perfectly match your design.
• No Unused Code: Your app only includes the components you actually use.
• Excellent Foundations: You get best-in-class accessibility from Radix and the power of utility-first styling with Tailwind CSS.

Building the chat input form becomes trivial and looks great from the start:

import { Button } from "@/components/ui/button";
import { Input } from "@/components/ui/input";

function MessageInputForm({ onSubmit }: { onSubmit: (text: string) => void; }) {
  const [text, setText] = React.useState("");

  const handleSubmit = (e: React.FormEvent) => {
    e.preventDefault();
    if (text.trim()) {
      onSubmit(text.trim());
      setText("");
    }
  };

  return (
    <form onSubmit={handleSubmit} className="flex w-full items-center space-x-2">
      <Input 
        type="text" 
        placeholder="Type a message..." 
        value={text}
        onChange={(e) => setText(e.target.value)}
      />
      <Button type="submit">Send</Button>
    </form>
  );
}

Putting It All Together: The Modern Chat Component

Now, let's see how these three tools work in harmony. We'll use TanStack Query for the initial load, PartyKit for real-time messages, and `shadcn/ui` for the interface. The real magic is how we can make PartyKit update our TanStack Query cache directly.

import React from 'react';
import { useQuery, useQueryClient } from '@tanstack/react-query';
import usePartySocket from 'partysocket/react';

import { Button } from '@/components/ui/button';
import { Input } from '@/components/ui/input';

// Assume these types and fetcher exist
// type Message = { id: string; text: string; author: string };
// const fetchMessages = async (roomId: string): Promise<Message[]> => { ... };

export function Chat({ roomId }: { roomId: string }) {
  const queryClient = useQueryClient();
  const queryKey = ['messages', roomId];

  // 1. Fetch initial messages with TanStack Query
  const { data: messages = [], isLoading } = useQuery({
    queryKey,
    queryFn: () => fetchMessages(roomId),
  });

  // 2. Connect to PartyKit for real-time updates
  const socket = usePartySocket({
    host: 'your-project.username.partykit.dev',
    room: roomId,
    onMessage(event) {
      const newMessage = JSON.parse(event.data) as Message;
      // Update the TanStack Query cache with the new message
      queryClient.setQueryData<Message[]>(queryKey, (oldData) => 
        oldData ? [...oldData, newMessage] : [newMessage]
      );
    },
  });

  const handleSendMessage = (text: string) => {
    const message = { text, author: 'Me' }; // Simplified
    // We can use optimistic updates here, but for now, just send.
    socket.send(JSON.stringify(message));
  };

  if (isLoading) return <div>Loading...</div>;

  return (
    <div className="flex flex-col h-full">
      <div className="flex-1 p-4"> 
        {messages.map((msg) => (<div key={msg.id}>{msg.author}: {msg.text}</div>))}
      </div>
      <div className="p-4 border-t">
        {/* 3. Use shadcn/ui for a clean input form */}
        <MessageInputForm onSubmit={handleSendMessage} />
      </div>
    </div>
  );
}

This component is the perfect summary. TanStack Query handles the async server state. PartyKit pushes real-time updates. And instead of a messy `useState` hook, we push those updates directly into the TanStack Query cache, making it the single source of truth for our server data. It's clean, efficient, and incredibly scalable.

Conclusion: Stop Building Like It's 2020

The tools we use define our limitations and our potential. By embracing a modern stack like TanStack Query, PartyKit, and `shadcn/ui`, you're not just building a chat app—you're adopting a more resilient, efficient, and enjoyable way of developing software.

You get robust data management, effortless real-time communication, and a beautiful, customizable UI, all with less code and fewer headaches. This is my 2025 React chat implementation, and I'm not looking back.

What's in your 2025 stack? Let me know!