Understand and use composition in React

React is a cool library to make front end apps. I work with it since 3 years and I’m not bored to use it !

Composition is very powerful in React but for some cases, it may be hard to use.

Today I will give you examples of composition caught up in real Typescript projects.

Specialization

Take a very common component, like a button. We have a lot of them in our apps.

Below, a generic component, a button with some props.

const Button: React.FC<ButtonProps & React.ButtonHTMLAttributes<HTMLButtonElement>> = ({
  children,
  size,
  color,
  isLoading,
  className,
  ...others
}) => (
  <button
    className={clsx('button', size, color, isLoading ? 'is-loading' : undefined, className)}
    {...others}
  >
    {children}
  </button>
);

This component is here only to have a base. Now we can specialize it.

And this is what we get :

const ExportPdfButton: React.FC<ExportPdfButtonProps> = ({
  url,
  operation,
  reference,
  className,
}) => {
  const { t } = useTranslation();
  const [isLoading, setLoading] = useDownloadPdf(url, operation, reference);

  const handleClick = (e: React.MouseEvent<HTMLButtonElement | MouseEvent>) => {
    e.stopPropagation();
    setLoading(true);
  };

  return (
    <Button
      className={clsx('has-tooltip-arrow', className)}
      onClick={(e) => handleClick(e)}
      data-tooltip={uppercaseFirst(t('downloadPdf'))}
    >
      {isLoading ? (
        <FontAwesomeIcon icon={faSpinner} pulse />
      ) : (
        <FontAwesomeIcon icon={faFilePdf} />
      )}
    </Button>
  );
};

Now we have a specialized component. As you can see it’s a component to download a PDF file. This one have an onClick event, a custom hook and a special display during loading.

Another example of specialization with the same generic button component.

const ActionsButton: React.FC<ActionsButtonProps> = ({ title, label, type, modalContent }) => {
  const { t } = useTranslation();

  const openModal = (e: React.MouseEvent<HTMLButtonElement, MouseEvent>) => {
    e.stopPropagation();
    ModalService.open({
      onCancel: () => Promise.resolve(true),
      title,
      content: <ModalWrapper>{modalContent}</ModalWrapper>,
    });
  };

  return (
    <Button className={clsx('action-btn large', type)} onClick={openModal}>
      {uppercaseFirst(t(label))}
    </Button>
  );
};

This button open a modal from an onClick event, nothing else. It has a special design, which override the generic design of the button.

Containment

The special children prop is a great way to pass a component as prop.

Look at this example of how we use this.

const ContextWrapper: React.FC<ContextWrapperProps> = ({ children }) => {
  const [itemsState, dispatchitems] = useReducer(itemsReducer, itemsInitialState);
  const [filtersState, dispatchFilters] = useReducer(filtersReducer, filtersInitialState);
  return (
    <ItemsContext.Provider value={{ state: itemsState, dispatch: dispatchitems }}>
      <FiltersContext.Provider value={{ state: filtersState, dispatch: dispatchFilters }}>
        {children}
      </FiltersContext.Provider>
    </ItemsContext.Provider>
  );
};

With the React context API, you can add to a batch of related components a store like. Very useful to share data between avoiding props drilling.

Keep the context provider in a wrapper component make it more reusable.

Look at the related component :

const Items: React.FC = () => {
  const { elementId } = useParams<RouteParams>();
  const [element] = useElement(elementId);

  return (
    <ContextWrapper>
      {element && (
        <Page
          filtersComponent={<Filters />}
          actionsPanel={<ItemsActionsPanel element={element} />}
          dataTable={<ItemsTable />}
        />
      )}
    </ContextWrapper>
  );
};

Our wrapper come at the root and everything else is the children prop.

Injection

When you pass props, the only way is from parent to child.

But we can inject props in a component with the cloneElement method. I discovered that not very long ago.

Look above and now look the details of the Page component below.

const Page: React.FC<PageProps> = ({ filtersComponent, actionsPanel, dataTable }) => {
  const [isVisible, setIsVisible] = useState<boolean>(false);
  const { t } = useTranslation();

  const toggleSideBar = () => {
    setIsVisible(!isVisible);
  };

  const actionsPanelWithProps = React.Children.map(actionsPanel, (child, i) => {
    return React.cloneElement(child, {
      toggleSideBar,
      index: i,
    });
  });

  return (
    <>
      <header>
        <NavBar />
      </header>
      <main className="site-content">
        <SideBar
          title={uppercaseFirst(t('filters'))}
          isVisible={isVisible}
          toggleSideBar={toggleSideBar}
        >
          {filtersComponent}
          <ResetFiltersButton isFullWidth />
        </SideBar>
        <div className={Style.container}>
          {actionsPanelWithProps}
          {dataTable}
        </div>
      </main>
      {filtersComponent ? <ModalProvider /> : null}
    </>
  );
};

We need the isVisible state here, but we want to pass it to a props component which is set higher in the tree.

With cloneElement, we can add props, here a method to display the content of the sidebar, to another component.

Conclusion

Now you can see what we can do with composition in React.

Maybe I don’t cover all the possibilities, but if any of us find a new one, he can share it on Twitter !