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ReactJS - Stateless Functional Components
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  Stateless Functional Component

Components let you split the UI into independent, reusable pieces. This is the beauty of React; we can separate a page into many small reusable components.

Prior to React v14 we could create a stateful React component using React.Component (in ES6), or React.createClass (in ES5), irrespective of whether it requires any state to manage data or not.

React v14 introduced a simpler way to define components, usually referred to as stateless functional components. These components use plain JavaScript functions.

For example:

function Welcome(props) {
  return <h1>Hello, {props.name}</h1>;
}

This function is a valid React component because it accepts a single props object argument with data and returns a React element. We call such components functional because they are literally JavaScript functions.

Stateless functional components typically focus on UI; state should be managed by higher-level “container” components, or via Flux/Redux etc. Stateless functional components don’t support state or lifecycle methods.

Benefits:

  1. No class overhead
  2. Don't have to worry about this keyword
  3. Easy to write and easy to understand
  4. Don't have to worry about managing state values
  5. Performance improvement

Summary: If you are writing a React component that doesn't require state and would like to create a reusable UI, instead of creating a standard React Component you can write it as a stateless functional component.

Let's take a simple example :

Let's say we have a page that can register a user, search for registered users, or display a list of all the registered users.

This is entry point of the application, index.js:

import React from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';

import HomePage from './homepage'

ReactDOM.render(
    <HomePage/>,
    document.getElementById('app')
);

The HomePage component provides the UI to register and search for users. Note that it is a typical React component including state, UI, and behavioral code. The data for the list of registered users is stored in the state variable, but our reusable List (shown below) encapsulates the UI code for the list.

homepage.js:

import React from 'react'
import {Component} from 'react';

import List from './list';

export default class Temp extends Component{
    
    constructor(props) {
        super();
        this.state={users:[], showSearchResult: false, searchResult: []};
    }

    registerClick(){
        let users = this.state.users.slice();
        if(users.indexOf(this.refs.mail_id.value) == -1){
            users.push(this.refs.mail_id.value);
            this.refs.mail_id.value = '';
            this.setState({users});
        }else{
            alert('user already registered');
        }
    }

    searchClick(){
        let users = this.state.users;
        let index = users.indexOf(this.refs.search.value); 
        if(index >= 0){
            this.setState({searchResult: users[index], showSearchResult: true});
        }else{
            alert('no user found with this mail id');
        }
    }

    hideSearchResult(){
        this.setState({showSearchResult: false});
    }

    render() {
        return (
            <div>
                <input placeholder='email-id' ref='mail_id'/>
                <input type='submit' value='Click here to register' onClick={this.registerClick.bind(this)}/>
                <input style={{marginLeft: '100px'}} placeholder='search' ref='search'/>
                <input type='submit' value='Click here to register' onClick={this.searchClick.bind(this)}/>
                {this.state.showSearchResult ?
                    <div>
                        Search Result:
                        <List users={[this.state.searchResult]}/>
                        <p onClick={this.hideSearchResult.bind(this)}>Close this</p>
                    </div>
                    :
                    <div>
                        Registered users:
                        <br/>
                        {this.state.users.length ? 
                            <List users={this.state.users}/>
                            :
                            "no user is registered"
                        }
                    </div>
                }
            </div>
        );
    }
}

Finally, our stateless functional component List, which is used display both the list of registered users and the search results, but without maintaining any state itself.

list.js:

import React from 'react';
var colors = ['#6A1B9A', '#76FF03', '#4527A0'];

var List = (props) => {
    return(
        <div>
            {
                props.users.map((user, i)=>{
                    return(
                        <div key={i} style={{color: colors[i%3]}}>
                            {user}
                        </div>
                    );                
                })
            }
        </div>
    );
}

export default List;

Reference: https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/components-and-props.html (opens new window)

Remarks

Stateless functional components in React are pure functions of the passed in props. These components do not rely on state and discard the use of component lifecycle methods. You may, however, still define propTypes and defaultPropts.

See https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/reusable-components.html#stateless-functions (opens new window) for further information about stateless functional components.

 

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