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You're reading from Getting Started with React

Product typeBook

Published inApr 2016

Reading LevelIntermediate

Publisher

ISBN-139781783550579

Edition1st Edition

Languages

JavaScript

Tools

React

Concepts

Front End Web Development

Authors (3):

Doel Sengupta

Manu Singhal

Danillo Corvalan

View More author details

Chapter 7. Making Your Component Reusable

Until now, we have dug into React's components' lifecycle, properties, state, and ECMAScript with respect to React 0.1.13 and future versions. In this chapter, we will also see how we can write reusable components/code in React applications. Such reusable components in React are named Mixins. Furthermore, we will explore how the React component's properties can be validated.

The following topics to be covered in this chapter:

Understanding mixins
A higher order component in ECMA6 (as Mixin is not supported in ECMA6)
Different types of validations in a React application
The structure of a React component and application's architecture

Understanding Mixins

The Mixins (reusable components) are typically those React components that are used in multiple places and thus can be reused. Typically, the design elements, such as buttons, layout components, form fields, or any code logic/computation, that are used more than once are extracted in code named Mixin. Thus, Mixins help us incorporate some additional functionalities to existing React components by acting as helpers.

Note

Like in the previous chapters , the index.html content remains the same. Only the contents of the corresponding js (having the React components) changes.

Exploring Mixins by example

In this example we are setting the interval of the window global objects for every 100 ms:

Content of index.html:

<!DOCTYPE html>
            <html>
<head>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react/0.14.0-rc1/react.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react/0.13.3/JSXTransformer.js"></script...

Validations

Validations are an integral part of any application dealing with user input. In ReactJS, there are some validations provided by the library that enables the developer to validate the data received.

Data are received mostly as properties (props) in react application. The various validators are exported from React.PropTypes. Any validation error, if occurs, will appear in the JavaScript console. Any such error occurring due to validation check will only occur in the development mode due to performance reasons.

Take a look at the Facebook ReactJS development team documentation https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/reusable-components.html#prop-validation. The following is an example of the various validators:

React.createClass({
  propTypes: {
    // You can declare that a prop is a specific JS primitive. By default, these
    // are all optional.
    optionalArray: React.PropTypes.array,
    optionalBool: React.PropTypes.bool,
    optionalFunc: React.PropTypes.func,
    optionalNumber...

The structure of component

Now that we have explored quite a lot regarding ReactJS, there might be queries in your mind about how to architecture a react component or more broadly a react application as a whole. There are no ground rules that have been set, which is ideal while writing an application based on ReactJS. However, if we dig into the tutorials by the Facebook documentation team, hyperlink https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/tutorial.html, we will be able to understand the underlying way they have used while writing such an app.

Let's explore first how a component is structured mostly:

The component declaredData is fetched from the server [if required].
The propTypes of the component are declared [used for validations].
Component lifecycle methods [componentWillMount, componentDidMount, componentDidUpdate,componentWillUnmount, and so on] are defined.
Within each of these lifecycle methods, the functions of these methods are either declared or called internally from another JS functions...

Summary

In this chapter, we explored how we can develop reusable components in ReactJS (Mixins, before ES6 implementation). We also came to know about the higher order components, which are used later in the latter versions of ReactJS (from 0.13), which support ES6 and doesn't support Mixins. Validations are an integral part of any application, especially those using user input (that is, form inputs). We explored how ReactJS deals with validations and how we can use our custom validations as well. We got an overview how the react components are structured. In the following chapter, we will be dealing with the testing, in a React application.

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Authors (3)

Doel Sengupta

Doel Sengupta is a software programmer and is working in the industry for over 7 years, as a DevOps engineer and as a developer building enterprise level Web and mobile applications using RubyonRails and Rhomobile, Chef. Currently she is exploring the Javascript ecosystem. She has been a speaker in Ruby conferences. She finds interest in life sciences and has publications of her work in customised human joint prostheses design using Ansys & Mimics. She is an avid blogger (www.doels.net) writing about her technical and not-so-technical passions like culinary, photography, films. Follow her on twitter @doelsengupta.
Read more about Doel Sengupta

Manu Singhal

Manu Singhal has been a programmer for 8 years and loves to code on Ruby and React. These days, he is busy cofounding a startup in e-commerce. In earlier roles, he has developed many enterprise and consumer based web/mobile applications and has also been a speaker at Ruby Conferences in India and the USA. He never misses a chance to play tennis and go hiking. He has worked with Tata Consultancy Services and McKinsey & Company as a software developer and an architect. He has contributed in books on Rhomobile and RubyMotion by Packt earlier.
Read more about Manu Singhal

Danillo Corvalan

Danillo Corvalan is a software engineer who is passionate about software patterns and practices. He has a keen interest in the rapidly changing world of software development. He is quite insistent about the need of fast and reliable frameworks. He is originally from Brazil, now living in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He loves biking a lot. In Brazil, he worked on applications for the general public and lawyers, at the Court of Justice in his hometown city, Cuiab/MT. Then, he moved to Florianpolis/SC, and worked at Bravi Software for developing hybrid and responsive web apps for education. Now, in Amsterdam, he is working at Vigour.io and helping to develop live multiscreen and responsive apps. From the web client-side perspective, in general, he has been in touch with technologies, such as vanilla JavaScript, jQuery, Backbone, and ReactJS. For the past 5 years, Danillo has also worked with open source platforms and JavaScript on the server side (Node.js). He has played with React Native in order to develop native mobile applications with ReactJS.
Read more about Danillo Corvalan

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