Quick Summary:

This step-by-step guide walks you through building a React AI chatbot using React.js, TypeScript, and the Groq Cloud API. It explains how to create a clean UI, integrate real-time AI responses, and store chat history locally. The tutorial starts with setting up a React project using Vite, building modular components, handling API calls to Groq, and displaying chat messages. Ideal for beginners with basic React knowledge, it covers essentials like input handling, message rendering, and state management. By the end, you’ll have a functional, customizable AI chatbot ready for integration into your React applications.

Table of Content

  • Introduction
  • Why Build an AI Chatbot in React JS?
  • Prerequisites for React Chatbot
    • Step 1: Project Setup with Vite
    • Step 2: Project Structure
    • Step 3: Set up Environment & API Key
    • Step 4: Build the Chat API Call
    • Step 5: Build Chat Input
    • Step 6: Store Chat History in LocalStorage
    • Step 7: Display Messages
    • Final Touch
  • Conclusion
  • FAQs

Introduction

In the ever-evolving world of web technologies, chatbots are everywhere. It helps users with shopping, answering questions, and more. Building one might seem tricky, but with React.js, it’s pretty simple. One can create a sleek, functional AI chatbot for your projects in just a few steps.

In this blog post, we’ll guide you through creating a React AI chatbot. You’ll see how easy it can be to integrate a chatbot into your React website. You don’t need any prior experience with AI in development, but basic React chatbot knowledge will be helpful.

Why Build an AI Chatbot in React JS?

React JS is a powerful, component-based JavaScript library that excels at building dynamic user interfaces. When it comes to AI chatbots, chatbot React offers several advantages:

Why Choose React JS for AI Chatbots
  • Real-Time UI Updates: React’s virtual DOM makes the chatbot interface highly responsive, enabling real-time message rendering without lag.
  • Component Reusability: You can build chatbot features like message bubbles, input fields, and loaders as reusable components, saving development time.
  • Easy Integration: React integrates with AI services like OpenAI, Dialogflow, or custom ML models through APIs.
  • Scalability: Whether it’s a simple FAQ bot or a complex conversational agent, React scales well with growing feature sets.
  • Developer Ecosystem: With a vast community, reusable libraries, and tooling support, React speeds up development and troubleshooting.

Building an AI chatbot in React JS enhances user interaction and leverages the power of modern front-end development for smarter, faster communication. With React’s flexibility and ease of integration with AI tools, you can create responsive, intelligent chatbots that elevate user experience. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned developer, this guided tutorial equips you with the knowledge to bring your chatbot idea to life, efficiently and effectively.

Prerequisites for React Chatbot

Before starting, ensure you are familiar with:

  • JavaScript/TypeScript basics
  • React fundamentals (components, state)
  • Node.js and npm

AI chatbots are the future — is your app ready?

Our experienced ReactJS developers will help you integrate an intelligent chatbot into your React app with ease.

Steps to Build React AI Chatbot

This tutorial will walk you through building a simple yet powerful AI chatbot using React, TypeScript, and Groq Cloud API. You’ll create an interface where users can chat with an AI and see past messages stored locally.

Step 1: Project Setup with Vite

Open a terminal and run:

    npm create vite@latest

Choose:

  • Framework: React
  • Variant: TypeScript

Then:

    cd your-project-name
    npm install
    npm run dev

Step 2: Project Structure

Inside src, create:

    src/
      components/
      AppName.tsx
      Headings.tsx
      SearchBar.tsx
      Button.tsx
      Chat.tsx

Step 3: Set up Environment & API Key

1. Get your free Groq API key from https://console.groq.com.
2. Create a .env file:

    VITE_GROQ_API_KEY=your_groq_api_key

3. Access it in code:

    const apiKey = import.meta.env.VITE_GROQ_API_KEY;

Step 4: Build the Chat API Call

Here’s how to send a prompt to Groq API:

    export const fetchGroqResponse = async (prompt: string): Promise<string> => {
      const response = await fetch("https://api.groq.com/openai/v1/chat/completions", {
        method: "POST",
        headers: {
          "Content-Type": "application/json",
          Authorization: `Bearer ${import.meta.env.VITE_GROQ_API_KEY}`,
        },
        body: JSON.stringify({
          model: "mixtral-8x7b-32768",
          messages: [{ role: "user", content: prompt }],
        }),
      });

      const data = await response.json();
      return data.choices[0].message.content;
    };

Want to test faster? Check out our collection of ChatGPT prompts for marketing to streamline your AI chatbot testing and debugging process.

Step 5: Build Chat Input

In SearchBar.tsx:

    import { useState } from "react";

    export const SearchBar = ({ onSend }: { onSend: (msg: string) => void }) => {
      const [input, setInput] = useState("");

      const handleSubmit = () => {
        onSend(input);
        setInput("");
      };

      return (
        <div>
          <input value={input} onChange={(e) => setInput(e.target.value)} />
          <button onClick={handleSubmit}>Send</button>
        </div>
      );
    };

Step 6: Store Chat History in LocalStorage

    const loadHistory = () => {
      const saved = localStorage.getItem("chat_history");
      return saved ? JSON.parse(saved) : [];
    };

    const saveHistory = (history: string[]) => {
      localStorage.setItem("chat_history", JSON.stringify(history));
    };

Call these functions inside your main App component.

Step 7: Display Messages

In Chat.tsx:

    export const Chat = ({ messages }: { messages: string[] }) => (
      <div>
        {messages.map((msg, idx) => (
          <p key={idx}>{msg}</p>
        ))}
      </div>
    );

Final Touch

    function App() {
      const [messages, setMessages] = useState<string[]>(loadHistory());

      const handleSend = async (msg: string) => {
        const aiResponse = await fetchGroqResponse(msg);
        const updated = [...messages, `You: ${msg}`, `AI: ${aiResponse}`];
        setMessages(updated);
        saveHistory(updated);
      };

      return (
        <div>
          <SearchBar onSend={handleSend} />
          <Chat messages={messages} />
        </div>
      );
    }

Wrap it all inside App.tsx:

You’re Done!

You’ve now built a React + TypeScript AI chatbot using the Groq Cloud API with:

  • Persistent chat history
  • API-driven AI responses
  • Modular components

Conclusion

Building a React AI chatbot may seem complex, but it’s surprisingly manageable with the right tools and a structured guide. Using React JS with TypeScript and integrating the Groq Cloud API, you’ve built an innovative, responsive React chatbot UI and persistent chat history. This setup is perfect for beginners exploring AI integration and developers looking to enhance user interaction on their React apps. Ready to take it further? Start customizing, scaling, or integrating with more advanced NLP features to match your project’s needs.

FAQs

The React AI chatbot is an intelligent interface built using React JS to process user input and return AI-generated responses. APIs like OpenAI or Groq often power it.

Yes, this chatbot can be adapted for production environments with additional security, error handling, and styling enhancements.

No, this guide is beginner-friendly. As long as you know the basics of React and TypeScript, you can follow along easily.

Groq offers free access with limits. With their free tier, you can start building and testing your chatbot, then upgrade as needed.

You can add features like voice input, advanced context handling, integrations with external APIs, or authentication for personalized chats.

A React chatbot typically refers to a custom-built solution, while libraries like “react-chatbot-kit” provide pre-built components to speed up development.

React AI chatbot react chatbot
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