Adding real-time notifications to your React application can greatly enhance user experience by delivering instant feedback and updates as events occur. Notifications serve many purposes:

• Alert users about new messages;
• Inform about system updates;
• Notify users of friend requests;
• Highlight important changes in the application.

To trigger these notifications, your server emits a socket event—such as "notification"—whenever a relevant action occurs. The React client listens for this event and, upon receiving it, updates the UI to inform the user immediately.

To manage notification state in React, you typically store incoming notifications in a state variable, often using the useState or useReducer hook. When a new notification arrives via a socket event, you update this state, which in turn causes the UI to re-render and display the new alert. You might show notifications as a list, a badge counter, or a toast popup. Integrating this with your socket event handling ensures notifications appear in real time without requiring a page refresh. It's important to ensure that state updates are handled efficiently, especially if notifications can arrive rapidly or in large numbers.