Lecture 6
Assignment 5 (due 4/8 3:59 PM on CMS.) Woo, last assignment!
Conditional Rendering
Sometimes we only want things to render when a certain condition is met. For example, only display text when we meet a certain condition. React has conditional rendering to make this very simple.
const PrelimTime = ({ prelimToday }: { readonly prelimToday: boolean }) => {
if (prelimToday) {
return <p>I have a prelim today.</p>;
} else {
return <p>I don't have a prelim today.</p>;
}
};
export default PrelimTime;
In this example, we have a functional component PrelimTime that takes in a
prop prelimToday. prelimToday is a boolean holding whether we have a prelim
today or not. We want the component to display "I have a prelim today." if
prelimToday is true and "I don't have a prelim today." if it is false.
Traditionally, we would use the if statement for this behavior (as shown
above). We can also use conditional rendering to make writing this functionality
more convenient.
First we can use the ternary operator:
const PrelimTime = ({ prelimToday }: { readonly prelimToday: boolean }) => (
prelimToday
? <p>I have a prelim today.</p>
: <p>I don't have a prelim today.</p>;
);
export default PrelimTime;
The ternary operator is also very common in other languages as well such as Java or Python. The basic syntax is as follows:
[boolean expression] ? [true_result] : [false_result]
Before the ? you have your expression producing true or false. The part
after the ? but before the : is the result/functionality you want if the
boolean expression evaluates to true. The part after the : is what you want
to happen if the expression is false.
Connecting with the PrelimTime example, my boolean expression was just the
prop prelimToday, although in your code it can be a more complex boolean
expression. If prelimToday is true, I display "I have a prelim today." If
prelimToday is false, I display "I have a prelim today."
Notice though, how the only thing changing in this text is adding the word
"don't" if prelimToday is false. So only if prelimToday is false, we
want to add don't.
React supports the use of && operator:
const PrelimTime = ({ prelimToday }: { readonly prelimToday: boolean }) => (
<p>I {!prelimToday && "don't"} have a prelim today.</p>
);
export default PrelimTime;
Here, we display the text "I have a prelim today.". However, in the curly
braces, if prelimToday is false then the word "don't" will be rendered.
Conditional rendering with && is useful when you only have expected behavior
for one branch of the conditional. In this case, I only had desired behavior if
prelimToday was false.
As you have seen, React's conditional rendering made modifying render behavior based on conditions a lot easier. In this small example, we went from five lines of code in the component to just one!
Composition vs. Inheritance
Composition and inheritance are two programming techniques for defining how classes relate to objects. (Think of classes as the blueprint for a house and objects the actual houses created from that blueprint)
Composition
Composition defines a class as the sum of its individual parts. This is a "has-a" relationship (e.g. a car has a steering wheel, has a window, etc). In Java (and other object oriented languages), these components are represented as instance variables.
Inheritance
Inheritance derives one class from another. If class A is the parent of class B and C, B and C inherit the properties/functions of A. This is a "is-a" relationship (e.g. car is a vehicle, circle is a shape.)
React uses Composition
If React were to use inheritance, the children components would essentially be very similar to their parent, which doesn't make much sense. Instead, we use composition so that the parent compoens is the sum of their children.
“React has a powerful composition model, and we recommend using composition instead of inheritance to reuse code between components.” -- React Docs
Containment
Children are the components you put within another component:
<ComponentA>{/* anything here is a child of Component A */}</ComponentA>
Components may not know their children ahead of time. If we want to create a component A in component B and we want A to have some children components C, D, E... A doesn't know what components are there beforehand. Instead we can pass a children prop from B to A to pass in the children components for A.
import { ReactNode } from 'react';
type Props = { readonly children: ReactNode };
const Container = (props: Props) => (
<div className="Border">{props.children}</div>
);
const App = () => (
<div className="App">
<Container>
<p>Hello!</p>
<p>Bye!</p>
</Container>
</div>
);
There are two paragraph elements <p></p> between the <Container></Container> tag. Those two elements will be passed to Container as props.children.
We didn't actually get to this live demo, adapted from this tutorial in the React docs, during lecture but it is very simple if you want to try it out yourself. We also show how to import styles.
Less common but you also may want multiple "holes" in your component (for example, a left and right child):
import { ReactNode } from 'react';
import './SplitPane.css'; // this is how we import styles
type Props = { readonly left: ReactNode; readonly right: ReactNode };
const SplitPane = (props: Props) => (
<div>
<div className="LeftPane">{props.left}</div>
<div className="RightPane">{props.right}</div>
</div>
);
export default SplitPane;
/* these colors are ugly I know */
.LeftPane {
float: left;
width: 50%;
background-color: red;
}
.RightPane {
float: right;
width: 50%;
background-color: aquamarine;
}
import SplitPane from './SplitPane';
import Container from './Container';
const App = () => {
return (
<div className="App">
<Container>
<p>Hello, world!</p>
</Container>
<SplitPane
left={<div>I'm on the left!</div>}
right={<div>I'm on the right!</div>}
/>
</div>
);
};
export default App;
Lifting State Up
Recall containment, which says that the parents don't know their children components beforehand. This brings up some issues when we do need the parents to access some states in the children components. The way we solve this problem is by lifting the states up.
This section was a live demo, adapted from this tutorial in the React docs. In this demo we will create a convertor between Celsius and Fahrenheit. We will create two components, FahrenheitInput and CelsiusInput. They will each keep a state that stores the current temperature in its corresponding unit. However, this is not enough. Once we change the temperature input in a certain component, we need to update the other so that they will be on the same page. The way we do that is through lifting the states up to store the temperature in App. We pass the temperature setter as callbacks to each of the children components.
import { useState } from 'react';
import './App.css';
import FahrenheitInput from './FahrenheitInput';
import CelsiusInput from './CelsiusInput';
function App() {
const [temperature, setTemperature] = useState(-40);
return (
<div className="App">
<label>Fahrenheit:</label>
<FahrenheitInput
temperature={temperature}
callback={(temp) => setTemperature(temp)}
/>
<br />
<label>Celsius:</label>
<CelsiusInput
temperature={temperature}
callback={(temp) => setTemperature(temp)}
/>
<br />
{temperature >= 100 ? (
<span>Water would boil here!</span>
) : (
<span>Water would not boil here!</span>
)}
<br />
<span>Water would {temperature >= 0 && 'not'} freeze here!</span>
</div>
);
}
export default App;
import { ChangeEvent } from 'react';
type Props = {
readonly temperature: number;
readonly callback: (temperature: number) => void;
};
const CelsiusInput = ({ temperature, callback }: Props) => {
const handlechange = (e: ChangeEvent<HTMLInputElement>) =>
callback(parseInt(e.target.value) || 0);
return <input value={temperature} onChange={handlechange} />;
};
export default CelsiusInput;
type Props = {
readonly temperature: number;
readonly callback: (temperature: number) => void;
};
const FahrenheitInput = ({ temperature, callback }: Props) => {
const handlechange = (e: ChangeEvent<HTMLInputElement>) =>
callback((((parseInt(e.target.value) || 0) - 32) * 5) / 9);
return <input value={(temperature * 9) / 5 + 32} onChange={handlechange} />;
};
export default FahrenheitInput;
Check lecture video for a more detailed explanation.