[tomduncalf]

You do have to override the submit functionality if you don't want to load a new page, sure, but that was always the case with plain Javascript or jQuery or whatever.

You don't have to maintain the state of what the user inputs if you leave the inputs as uncontrolled (https://reactjs.org/docs/uncontrolled-components.html) and access their value via a ref. You could even give them IDs and access their value directly via that if you wanted to, just like you would pre-React. But there are clearly advantages to making the inputs controlled by React, otherwise there'd be no reason to bother doing so (not saying that there aren't probaly a lot of cases where you could keep it simpler but people have been led to believe they need to put their form data in Redux so use some elaborate solution which doesn't scale, or whatever).

Also if you are doing forms in React, check out formik, it's the nicest library I've found so far. Granted it's not as "easy" as a straight HTML form that POSTs to a new page, of course, but modern web experiences often demand richer functionality than "the old way" allows.

[acemarke]

Note that we specifically recommend that people _not_ put most form state in Redux:

https://redux.js.org/faq/organizing-state#should-i-put-form-...

Also, per the form libraries question: Formik and React Final Form are the two standard packages I suggest folks look at. React Hook Form seems to be gaining some popularity. Also, I recently ran across https://github.com/wsmd/react-use-form-state and tried it in one of my own projects, and was pretty impressed with it as a lightweight option.