Hybrid jQuery React Interoperability Strategies During Incremental Frontend Framework Migration

Abstract

Many production web applications built between 2010 and 2018 still depend heavily on jQuery for DOM manipulation, event handling, and AJAX communication, while product teams increasingly want the componentized, declarative model that React provides. Rewriting such an application from scratch is rarely feasible: it freezes feature delivery, concentrates risk into a single high stakes release, and discards years of tested business logic embedded in jQuery event handlers and plugins. This article surveys and evaluates hybrid interoperability strategies that let jQuery and React occupy the same runtime and, in many cases, the same page during an incremental migration. Seven coexistence strategies are described in detail with illustrative code: mounting React components inside jQuery managed containers, wrapping jQuery plugins as React components, a custom event bridge for cross framework messaging, a shared state synchronization layer, route based strangler fig migration, an islands style adaptation for jQuery to React transitions, and build tooling considerations such as module federation and selective bundling. An illustrative case study models a mid size internal tools application migrated across five phases and reports simulated defect and performance indicators to make the trade offs concrete. The article closes with a comparison matrix of the seven strategies, a discussion of when each is appropriate, limitations of the analysis, and directions for further empirical work. The intended audience is engineering teams planning or currently executing an incremental jQuery to React migration in 2022 and researchers studying legacy frontend modernization.