Given this example code from the React docs:
var props = {};
props.foo = x;
props.bar = y;
var component = <Component {...props} />;
I did some looking into what ...props
actually evaluates to, which is this:
React.__spread({}, props)
Which in turn evaluates to {foo: x, bar: y}
.
But what I'm wondering is, why can't I just do this:
var component = <Component props />;
I don't see understand what the point of the spread operator is.
This helps make your code more succinct - since props
is an object, the spread operator takes the properties of the object you pass in and applied them to the component. So the Component will have properties a foo
with a value of x
and a bar
with a value of y
.
It would be the same as:
var component = <Component foo={props.foo} bar={props.bar} />;
just shorter
One of the best overviews of how object-rest-spread syntax works with react is published at reactpatterns.com:
JSX spread attributes
Spread Attributes is a JSX feature. It's syntactic sugar for passing all of an object's properties as JSX attributes.
These two examples are equivalent.
// props written as attributes
<main className="main" role="main">{children}</main>
// props "spread" from object
<main {...{className: "main", role: "main", children}} />
Use this to forward props
to underlying components.
const FancyDiv = props =>
<div className="fancy" {...props} />
Now, I can expect FancyDiv
to add the attributes it's concerned with as well as those it's not.
<FancyDiv data-id="my-fancy-div">So Fancy</FancyDiv>
// output: <div className="fancy" data-id="my-fancy-div">So Fancy</div>
Keep in mind that order matters. If props.className
is defined, it'll clobber the className
defined by FancyDiv
<FancyDiv className="my-fancy-div" />
// output: <div className="my-fancy-div"></div>
We can make FancyDiv
s className always "win" by placing it after the spread props ({...props})
.
// my `className` clobbers your `className`
const FancyDiv = props =>
<div {...props} className="fancy" />
You should handle these types of props gracefully. In this case, I'll merge the author's props.className
with the className
needed to style my component.
const FancyDiv = ({ className, ...props }) =>
<div
className={["fancy", className].join(' ')}
{...props}
/>
-- quoted from reactpatterns.com by @chantastic
Another good overview was published on the babeljs blog post React on ES6+ by Steven Luscher:
Destructuring & spread attributes
Often when composing components, we might want to pass down most of a parent component’s props to a child component, but not all of them. In combining ES6+ destructuring with JSX spread attributes, this becomes possible without ceremony:
class AutoloadingPostsGrid extends React.Component {
render() {
const {
className,
...others // contains all properties of this.props except for className
} = this.props;
return (
<div className={className}>
<PostsGrid {...others} />
<button onClick={this.handleLoadMoreClick}>Load more</button>
</div>
);
}
}
-- quoted from "BabelJS.org blog - React on ES6+" by Steven Luscher