React is a rendering library. That is, you create a tree of widgets (components in react lingo) and feed them data. React then manages the rendering (turning it into the DOM) for you whenever this data is changed. It does it in a generally efficient way.
Re-frame is a flux-like, elm-like uni-directional data flow framework that uses React as its rendering component. What re-frame gives you is a message bus to which you can dispatch messages from DOM events (eg user clicks button and you dispatch a user-defined message), a handler registration system which allows you to register functions to process messages[1], and a subscription system which allows you to "subscribe" to some view over your applications state in a way that if this view changes, your react components get fed new data and get rerendered (if necessary). Re-frame also has mechanisms to facilitate effectual handlers (that is, handlers which effect the outside world rather than being a pure function of (app state, message)->new app state; like normal handlers are).
That is, react does rendering, re-frame uses react and is a complete application framework that makes it easier to build large complex applications by allowing you to split your application into smaller (mostly pure-functional) pieces that communicate through the messaging system.
[1] Message handlers take in the message and the current application state and return a new version of the application state. That is, they are pure functions that move the application to its next state. Handlers are quite powerful and support "interceptors" (decorators/middleware for messages basically) and there are effect and coeffect handlers for managing side-effects (like dispatching new messages in a feedback loop, or talking to a server, for example).
Re-frame is a flux-like, elm-like uni-directional data flow framework that uses React as its rendering component. What re-frame gives you is a message bus to which you can dispatch messages from DOM events (eg user clicks button and you dispatch a user-defined message), a handler registration system which allows you to register functions to process messages[1], and a subscription system which allows you to "subscribe" to some view over your applications state in a way that if this view changes, your react components get fed new data and get rerendered (if necessary). Re-frame also has mechanisms to facilitate effectual handlers (that is, handlers which effect the outside world rather than being a pure function of (app state, message)->new app state; like normal handlers are).
That is, react does rendering, re-frame uses react and is a complete application framework that makes it easier to build large complex applications by allowing you to split your application into smaller (mostly pure-functional) pieces that communicate through the messaging system.
[1] Message handlers take in the message and the current application state and return a new version of the application state. That is, they are pure functions that move the application to its next state. Handlers are quite powerful and support "interceptors" (decorators/middleware for messages basically) and there are effect and coeffect handlers for managing side-effects (like dispatching new messages in a feedback loop, or talking to a server, for example).