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Is functional componet more faster than class component in react?

I have read in a few places to check this problem, but didnot find any good answer.
I hope good answer to it.

There is not any noticable performance difference in functional and class components. It is completely dependant on developer's preference what one likes. Just the things to note is,
you can reduce the number of lines in a functional component as compared to class component.
There is also fewer limitations in functional components as compared to class components
You can handle many lifecycle of the component just inside useEffect.
These all point in turn reduce the time of development.
You can refer to this article for more indept details: https://betterprogramming.pub/react-class-vs-functional-components-2327c7324bdd
There is also a benchmarking done in this article. https://jsfiddle.net/69z2wepo/136096/
Here are the findings:
You can notice here that, functional components take less time than class components, but not much significant.

I think no.
It's unlikely to see any performance difference from classes vs functions.
However the way we optimize classes and functions are different.

React Function Components with hooks vs Class Components

With the introduction of hooks in React, the main confusion now is when to use function components with hooks and class components because with the help of hooks one can get state and partial lifecycle hooks even in function components. So, I have the following questions
What is the real advantages of hooks?
When to use function components with hooks vs Class components?
For example, function components with hooks can't help in perf as class components does. They can't skip re-renders as they don't have shouldComponentUpdate implemented. Is there anymore reasons?

The idea behind introducing Hooks and other features like React.memo and React.lazy is to help reduce the code that one has to write and also aggregate similar actions together.
The docs mention few really good reason to make use of Hooks instead of classes
It’s hard to reuse stateful logic between components Generally when you use HOC or renderProps you have to restructure your App with multiple hierarchies when you try to see it in DevTools, Hooks avoid such scenarios and help in clearer code
Complex components become hard to understand Often with classes Mutually unrelated code often ends up together or related code tends to be split apart, it becomes more and more difficult to maintain. An example of such a case is event listeners, where you add listeners in componentDidMount and remove them in componentWillUnmount . Hooks let you combine these two
Classes confuse both people and machines With classes you need to understand binding and the context in which functions are called, which often becomes confusion.
function components with hooks can't help in perf as class
components does. They can't skip re-renders as they don't have
shouldComponentUpdate implemented.
Function component can be memoized in a similar way as React.PureComponent with Classes by making use of React.memo and you can pass in a comparator function as the second argument to React.memo that lets you implement a custom comparator
The idea is to be able write the code that you can write using React class component using function component with the help of Hooks and other utilities. Hooks can cover all use cases for classes while providing more flexibility in extracting, testing, and reusing code.
Since hooks is not yet fully shipped, its advised to not use hooks for critical components and start with relatively small component, and yes you can completely replace classes with function components
However one reason that you should still go for Class components over the function components with hooks until Suspense is out for data fetching. Data fetching with useEffect hooks isn't as intuitive as it is with lifecycle methods.
Also #DanAbramov in one of his tweets mentioned that hooks are designed to work with Suspense and until suspense is out it's better to use Class

Hooks greatly reduce the amount of code you need to write and increase its readability.
It is worth noting though that there are hidden processes going on behind (Just like component did mount etc.) that mean if you don't understand what is going on it can be difficult to troubleshoot. It is best to experiment with them and read through the docs fully before implementing on a live project.
Also there is still limited support/documentation for testing hooks compared to classes.
https://dev.to/theactualgivens/testing-react-hook-state-changes-2oga
Update 28/08/2020
Use the react hooks testing library with custom hooks for testing
https://github.com/testing-library/react-hooks-testing-library

Officially it sounds like hooks will completely replace classes?? maybe one day, but think about it; hooks have been around for 3 years (as of Mar 2021), and there are pros and cons in adopting them (More pros than cons... don't get me wrong)
I have plenty more experience myself with state management/classes and after doing a lot of research and testing, I found out that we need to know both classes and hooks very well. Hooks require a fraction of the code for simple components and seem excellent for optimizing HOCs. Meanwhile classes seem better with routing, container components and asynchronous programming for example.
I'm sure there are plenty more cases where each technology is better, but my point is that programmers need know both hooks and classes very well specially when working on projects with 100,000+ lines of code and millions of users. Read more here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/60134353/11239755

React App without state and props

I would like to know if it's fully consistent with the React principles.I made a React App without state and props.I've put pure javascript only inside componentDidMount e.g.
componentDidMount(){
const first = document.getElementById('first');
const second = document.getElementById('second');
function funk(){
console.log(first.innerHTML);
second.innerHTML = "Arrr";
}
funk();
}
Of course it's just an example, my app is far more complex.

Technically speaking, You can (as you may already know).
Should you do it? A big and glowing NO!.
With this approach of targeting the DOM directly, you are bypassing and missing most of the goodness that react has to offer with the Reconciliation and The Diffing Algorithm.
If you really (really) need to target the DOM, you can use react's ref API.
And you can see in their docs it's should be used sparingly :
Don’t Overuse Refs
Your first inclination may be to use refs to “make
things happen” in your app. If this is the case, take a moment and
think more critically about where state should be owned in the
component hierarchy. Often, it becomes clear that the proper place to
“own” that state is at a higher level in the hierarchy. See the
Lifting State Up guide for examples of this.

Yes and no
Yes, you can use it in some cases for utilizing complex jQuery plugins integrating react as a part of your project and so on...
I know that there are lots of haters of such approach but we should also understand business if it's possible to achieve a goal without spending 40-80hrs for coding it yourself - go for it.
No, you should not do any DOM manipulation in component live cycle methods unless you are very good with react and completely understand how things work internally in this library.
Changing DOM in such way will most likely cause performance issues because your components will not be able to utilize shadow DOM, as a result, your components will perform DOM manipulation after every change and could potentially slow down the application.

What is happening in a React component when you used #extend?

What is happening inside here from what I understand is that you're building out your own render method, which will render the html of the h1. This render method is called by React.DOM to figure out what to give to the virtual dom. The same goes for methods such as componentDidMount right? If you put in any of those lifecycle methods or render, React will call them accordingly to fit inside their code, but if create other functions, those will just be helper functions for you to render stuff with, right?
I guess I'm just trying to understand which part of the Component class is being used by React.DOM and which parts am I building. It seems weird that some methods are used to "configure" the component while others are used as helpers. What code inside the Component class is the React.DOM using? Is it like stuff to figure out the diffs on when to rerender stuff?
class Greeting extends React.Component {
render() {
return <h1>Hello, {this.props.name}</h1>;
}
}

Here's something to consider: ages ago in times long past, React and React-DOM were one in the same. React was targeted solely to webapps. So we could use h1, div, span, img, all of that using React only.
Now let me ask you this question. Let's say they wanted to take React, and make it so it could not only render to the DOM of a webpage, but also render the different components of a native mobile application? What would you do in that situation?
Obviously, all of those aforementioned HTML DOM elements, h1s etc etc, would be utterly useless! Android and iOS interiors do not know what any of those are whatsoever.
So the logical solution is to abstract that away. Instead of having those DOM nodes be an inherent part of React, instead make it so that React can render wherever and whatever!
You see, the React engine works pretty much the same in both React Native (mobile development), and standard web-based React with React-DOM. The lifecycle methods, the principles of design, the reconciliation, the entire engine is the same. Because React isn't about HTML or native applications, it's about a paradigm of data flow from application state into UI state.
So then, what is React-DOM doing with your component? Not a whole lot of anything, really. All of the diffing, data flow, etc etc are all handled by React.
What React-DOM does is it knows how to render the data provided by a React element as a DOM node. It knows how to update them, how to delete, them, all of that. You see, having all those abilities as part of the React core would not be ideal now, because React targets other platforms where those abilities are useless. And they would only bloat the package.

The only method inside the class you 'have' to provide is the render. The other component lifecycle methods, as you mentioned, are called if provided when those lifecycle methods come into play. If you have no need to tap into those other lifecycle methods (component just returns some markup based on props provided to it) and your component doesn't need its own state then I would highly recommend just using stateless functional components. The docs provided by React team are good for explaining this -
https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/components-and-props.html
As far as the 'helper methods' you mentioned, yes you can define as many methods as you need in your class. It is very common to split up some of the more complex rendering logic into smaller easier to read functions for code readability.

When to use ES6 class based React components vs. functional ES6 React components?

After spending some time learning React I understand the difference between the two main paradigms of creating components.
My question is when should I use which one and why? What are the benefits/tradeoffs of one over the other?
ES6 classes:
import React, { Component } from 'react';
export class MyComponent extends Component {
render() {
return (
<div></div>
);
}
}
Functional:
const MyComponent = (props) => {
return (
<div></div>
);
}
I’m thinking functional whenever there is no state to be manipulated by that component, but is that it?
I’m guessing if I use any life cycle methods, it might be best to go with a class based component.

New Answer: Much of the below was true, until the introduction of React Hooks.
componentDidUpdate can be replicated with useEffect(fn), where fn is the function to run upon rerendering.
componentDidMount methods can be replicated with useEffect(fn, []), where fn is the function to run upon rerendering, and [] is an array of objects for which the component will rerender, if and only if at least one has changed value since the previous render. As there are none, useEffect() runs once, on first mount.
state can be replicated with useState(), whose return value can be destructured to a reference of the state and a function that can set the state (i.e., const [state, setState] = useState(initState)). An example might explain this more clearly:
const Counter = () => {
const [count, setCount] = useState(0)
const increment = () => {
setCount(count + 1);
}
return (
<div>
<p>Count: {count}</p>
<button onClick={increment}>+</button>
</div>
)
}
default export Counter
As a small aside, I have heard a number of people discussing not using functional components for the performance reasons, specifically that
"Event handling functions are redefined per render in functional components"
Whilst true, please consider if your components are really rendering at such a speed or volume that this would be worth concern.
If they are, you can prevent redefining functions using useCallback and useMemo hooks. However, bear in mind that this may make your code (microscopically) worse in performance.
But honestly, I have never heard of redefining functions being a bottleneck in React apps. Premature optimisations are the root of all evil - worry about this when it's a problem.
Old Answer: You have the right idea. Go with functional if your component doesn't do much more than take in some props and render. You can think of these as pure functions because they will always render and behave the same, given the same props. Also, they don't care about lifecycle methods or have their own internal state.
Because they're lightweight, writing these simple components as functional components is pretty standard.
If your components need more functionality, like keeping state, use classes instead.
More info: https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/reusable-components.html#es6-classes

UPDATE Jan 2023
TLDR; Functions are the best way to create components. React.Component is a legacy API.
"We recommend to define components as functions instead of classes."
"Class components are still supported by React, but we don’t recommend using them in new code."
https://beta.reactjs.org/reference/react/Component
UPDATE March 2019
Building on what was stated in my original answer:
Are there any fundamental differences between React functions and
classes at all? Of course, there are — in the mental model.
https://overreacted.io/how-are-function-components-different-from-classes/
UPDATE Feb 2019:
With the introduction of React hooks, it seems as though the React teams wants us to use functional components whenever possible (which better follows JavaScript's functional nature).
Their motivation:
It’s hard to reuse stateful logic between components.
Complex components become hard to understand.
Classes confuse both people and machines.
A functional component with hooks can do almost everything a class component can do, without any of the draw backs mentions above.
I recommend using them as soon as you are able.
Original Answer
Functional components aren't any more lightweight than class based components, "they perform exactly as classes." - https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/5677#issuecomment-241190513
The above link is a little dated, but React 16.7.0's documentation says
that functional and class components:
are equivalent from React’s point of view
https://reactjs.org/docs/components-and-props.html#stateless-functions
There is essentially no difference between a functional component and a class component that just implements the render method, other than the syntax.
In the future (quoting the above link):
we [React] might add such optimizations
If you're trying to boost performance by eliminating unnecessary renders, both approaches provide support. memo for functional components and PureComponent for classes.
https://reactjs.org/docs/react-api.html#reactmemo
https://reactjs.org/docs/react-api.html#reactpurecomponent
It's really up to you. If you want less boilerplate, go functional. If you love functional programming and don't like classes, go functional. If you want consistency between all components in your codebase, go with classes. If you're tired of refactoring from functional to class based components when you need something like state, go with classes.

Always try to use stateless functions (functional components) whenever possible. There are scenarios where you'll need to use a regular React class:
The component needs to maintain state
The component is re-rendering too much and you need to control that via shouldComponentUpdate
You need a container component
UPDATE
There's now a React class called PureComponent that you can extend (instead of Component) which implements its own shouldComponentUpdate that takes care of shallow props comparison for you. Read more

As of React 17 the term Stateless Functional components is misleading and should be avoided (React.SFC deprecated, Dan Abramov on React.SFC), they can have a state, they can have hooks (that act as the lifecycle methods) as well, they more or less overlap with class components
Class based components
state
lifecycle methods
memoization with React.PureComponent
Functional components:
state (useState, useReducer hooks)
lifecycle methods (via the useEffect, useLayoutEffect hooks)
memoization via the memo HOC
Why i prefer Funtional components
React provide the useEffect hook which is a very clear and concise way to combine the componentDidMount, componentDidUpdate and componentWillUnmount lifecycle methods
With hooks you can extract logic that can be easily shared across components and testable
less confusion about the scoping
React motivation on why using hooks (i.e. functional components).

I have used functional components for heavily used application which is in production. There is only one time I used class components for "Error Boundaries" because there is no alternative "Error Boundaries" in functional components.
I used "class component" literally only one time.

Forms are easier with functional, because you can reuse form input fields and you can break them apart with React display conditionals.
Classes are one big component that can't be broken down or reused. They are better for function-heavy components, like a component that performs an algorithm in a pop-up module or something.
Best practice is reusability with functional components and then use small functional components to assemble complete sections, ex.- form input fields imported into a file for a React form.
Another best practice is to not nest components in the process of doing this.

Class-based components offer a more structured and organized way to define and implement a component, and they provide additional features and capabilities, such as the ability to use local state and lifecycle methods. This can make them a good choice for creating complex components that require a lot of logic and functionality.
On the other hand, functional components are simpler and easier to work with, and they can be more performant because they are more lightweight. They are also easier to test and debug, because they are pure functions that don't have side effects. This makes them a good choice for creating simple components that don't require a lot of logic or state management.