Related
I am watching Paul O Shannessy - Building React From Scratch
And I understand the mounting process very well but I have hard day trying to understand how React update a component and its children
The reconciler controls the update process by this method:
function receiveComponent(component, element) {
let prevElement = component._currentElement;
if (prevElement === element) {
return;
}
component.receiveComponent(element);
}
Component.receiveComponent
receiveComponent(nextElement) {
this.updateComponent(this._currentElement, nextElement);
}
and this is the Component.updateComponent method:
updateComponent(prevElement, nextElement) {
if (prevElement !== nextElement) {
// React would call componentWillReceiveProps here
}
// React would call componentWillUpdate here
// Update instance data
this._currentElement = nextElement;
this.props = nextElement.props;
this.state = this._pendingState;
this._pendingState = null;
let prevRenderedElement = this._renderedComponent._currentElement;
let nextRenderedElement = this.render();
if (shouldUpdateComponent(prevRenderedElement, nextRenderedElement)) {
Reconciler.receiveComponent(this._renderedComponent, nextRenderedElement);
}
}
This is the part of the code that updates the component after state change, and i assume that it should update the children too, but i can't understand how this code achieves that, in the mounting process React instantiate components to dive deeper in the tree but this doesn't happen here, we need to find the first HTML element then we can change our strategy and update that HTML element in another place in the code, and I can't find any way to find any HTML elements this way.
Finding the first HTML is the way to stop this endless recursion and logically this is what I expect from the code, to stop recursion the same way in the mounting process, but in mounting, this demanded component instantiation so we can delegate to the reconciler that will discover that we are dealing with a wrapper instance of an HTML element not a wrapper instance of a custom component then React can place that HTML element in the DOM.
I can't understand how the code works in the update process. this code as I see won't dive deeper in the tree and I think won't update the children and can't let React find the first HTML element so React can update the DOM element, isn't it?
This is the code repo on Github
I created a codesandbox to dig in
Here is the codesandbox I created
and here's a short recording of me opening the debugger and seeing the call stack.
How it works
Starting from where you left off, Component.updateComponent:
updateComponent(prevElement, nextElement) {
//...
if (shouldUpdateComponent(prevRenderedElement, nextRenderedElement)) {
Reconciler.receiveComponent(this._renderedComponent, nextRenderedElement);
//...
in the Component.updateComponent method Reconciler.receiveComponent is called which calls component.receiveComponent(element);
Now, this component refers to this._renderedComponent and is not an instance of Component but of DOMComponentWrapper
and here's the receiveComponent method of DOMComponentWrapper:
receiveComponent(nextElement) {
this.updateComponent(this._currentElement, nextElement);
}
updateComponent(prevElement, nextElement) {
// debugger;
this._currentElement = nextElement;
this._updateDOMProperties(prevElement.props, nextElement.props);
this._updateDOMChildren(prevElement.props, nextElement.props);
}
Then _updateDOMChildren ends up calling the children render method.
here's a call stack from the codesandbox I created to dig in.
How do we end up in DOMComponentWrapper
in the Component's mountComponent method we have:
let renderedComponent = instantiateComponent(renderedElement);
this._renderedComponent = renderedComponent;
and in instantiateComponent we have:
let type = element.type;
let wrapperInstance;
if (typeof type === 'string') {
wrapperInstance = HostComponent.construct(element);
} else if (typeof type === 'function') {
wrapperInstance = new element.type(element.props);
wrapperInstance._construct(element);
} else if (typeof element === 'string' || typeof element === 'number') {
wrapperInstance = HostComponent.constructTextComponent(element);
}
return wrapperInstance;
HostComponent is being injected with DOMComponentWrapper in dilithium.js main file:
HostComponent.inject(DOMComponentWrapper);
HostComponent is only a kind of proxy meant to invert control and allow different Hosts in React.
here's the inject method:
function inject(impl) {
implementation = impl;
}
and the construct method:
function construct(element) {
assert(implementation);
return new implementation(element);
}
When we have no DOMComponentWrapper
If we are updating a chain of Non Host Components like:
const Child = <div>Hello</div>
const Parent = () => <Child />
How does Child get rendered from an update to Parent?
the Parent Component has the following:
_renderedComponent which is an instance of Child(which is also a Component)
renderedComponent has an instance of Child because it gets the type of the "root" Element (the one returned by the render method)
so Reconciler.receiveComponent(this._renderedComponent, nextRenderedElement) will be calling component.receiveComponent(element) of the Child which in turn calls this.updateComponent(this._currentElement, nextElement); (of Child) which calls it's render method (let nextRenderedElement = this.render();)
React completely copy the actual DOM and create the virtual DOM in javascript. In our application whenever we update any of the data that ends up being rendered in our components, React does not rerender the entire DOM. It only affects the thing that matters. So react actually copies the virtual DOM again. This time it applies the changes to the data that got updated.
It will make the change in the red component and then it will compare this virtual DOM to the old DOM. It will see the different part. Then it will apply the DOM changes only to that different component.
The updating phase starts if props or the state changes. If the data at the top level changes:
If it is passing that data down to its children, all the children are going to be rerendered. If the state of the component at the mid-level gets changed:
This time only its children will get rerendered. React will rerender any part of the tree below that node. Because the data that generates the children components' view actually sits at the parent component(mid-level one). But anything above it, the parent or the siblings will not rerender. because data does not affect them. this concept is called Unidirectional Data Flow.
You can see in action in chrome browser. chose the rendering and then enable the painting flushing option
If you make any change on the page, you will see that updated components will be flashed.
UPDATING PHASE
componentWillReceiveProps method is invoked first in the component lifecycle's updating phase. It is called when a component receives new properties from its parent component. With this method we compare the current component's properties using the this.props object with the next component's properties
using the nextElement.props object. Based on this comparison, we can choose to update the component's state using the this.setState() function, which will NOT trigger
an additional render in this scenario.
Note that no matter how many times you call this.setState() in the componentWillReceiveProps() method, it won't trigger any additional renders of that component. React does an internal optimization where it batches the state updates together.
shouldComponentUpdated dictates if the components should rerender or not. By default, all class components will rerender whenever the props they receive or their state change. this method can prevent the default behavior by returning False. In this method, existing props and state values get compared with the next props and state values and return boolean to let React know whether the component should update or not. this method is for performance optimization. If it returns False componentWillUpdate(), render() and componentDidUpdate() wont get called.
The componentWillUpdate() method is called immediately before React updates the DOM. It gets two arguments: nextProps and nextState. You can use these arguments to prepare for the DOM update. However, you cannot use this.setState() in the componentWillUpdate() method.
After calling the componentWillUpdate() method, React invokes the render() method that performs the DOM update. Then, the componentDidUpdate() method is called.
The componentDidUpdate() method is called immediately after React updates the DOM. It gets these two arguments: prevProps and prevState. We use this method to interact with the updated DOM or perform any post-render operations. For example, in a counter example, counter number is increased in componentDidUpdate.
After componentDidUpdate() is called, the updating cycle ends. A new cycle is started when a component's state is updated or a parent component passes new properties. Or when you call the forceUpdate() method, it triggers a new updating cycle, but skips the shouldComponentUpdate() method (this method is for optimization) on a component that
triggered the update. However, shouldComponentUpdate() is called on all the child components as per the usual updating phase. Try to avoid using the forceUpdate() method as much as possible; this will promote your application's maintainability
Another answer might be the structure of the Fiber tree. During execution, react renders a ReactComponent into an object made out of ReactNodes and props. These ReactNodes are assembled into a FiberNode tree (which might be the in memory representation of the virutal dom?).
In the FiberNode tree, depending on the traversal algorithm (children first, sibling first, etc), React always has a single "next" node to continue. So, React will dive deeper into the tree, and update FiberNodes, as it goes along.
If we take the same example,
function App() {
return <div>
<Parent>
<Child01/>
<Child01/>
</Parent>
<Child03/>
</div>
}
function Parent({children}) {
const [state, setState] = useState(0);
return <div>
<button onClick={x => x+1)>click</button>
<Child02 />
{children}
</div>
}
Which React will transform into this FiberNode tree:
node01 = { type: App, return: null, child: node02, sibling: null }
node02 = { type: 'div', return: node01, child: node03, sibling: null }
node03 = { type: Parent, return: node02, child: node05(?), sibling: node04 }
node04 = { type: Child03, return: node02, child: null, sibling: null }
node05 = { type: Child01, return: node03, child: null, sibling: node06 }
node06 = { type: Child01, return: node03, child: null, sibling: null }
// Parent will spawn its own FiberTree,
node10 = { type: 'div', return: node02, child: node11, sibling: null }
node11 = { type: 'button', return: node10, child: null, sibling: node12 }
node12 = { type: Child02, return: node10, child: null, sibling: node05 }
I might have missed something (ie. node03's child might be node10), but the idea is this - React always have a single node (the 'next' node) to render when it traverses the fiber tree.
I think React not re-render parent component first instead of that, React re-render child component first.
Example: A (parent) -> B (child) -> C (child of B)
When A update state C (re-render) -> B -> A
Hey Consider using a Tree data structure for your need, ReactJs follows a unidirectional manner of Updating the state i.e. As soon as the there is a Change in the parent state then all the children which are passed on the props that are residing in the Parent Component are updated once and for all!
Consider using something known as Depth First Search as an algo option which will find you the Node that connects to the parent and once you reach that node , you check for the state and if there is a deviation from the state variables that are shared by the parent you can update them!
Note : This may all seem a bit theoretical but if you could do something remotely close to this thing you will have created a way to update components just how react does!
I found out experimentally that React will only re-render elements if it have to, which is always, except for {children} and React.memo().
Using children correctly, together with batched dom updates makes a very efficient and smooth user experience.
consider this case:
function App() {
return <div>
<Parent>
<Child01/>
<Child01/>
</Parent>
<Child03/>
</div>
}
function Parent({children}) {
const [state, setState] = useState(0);
return <div>
<button onClick={x => x+1)>click</button>
<Child02 />
{children}
</div>
}
when clicking on the button, you will get the following:
- button click
- setState(...), add Parent to dirty list
- start re-rendering all dirty nodes
- Parent rerenders
- Child02 rerenders
- DONE
Note that
Parent (app) and sibling (Child03) nodes will not get re-rendered, or you'll end up with a re-render recursion.
Parent is re-rendered because its state has changed, so its output has to be recalculated.
{children} have not been affected by this change, so it stays the same. (unless a context is involved, but that's a different mechanism).
finally, <Child02 /> has been marked dirty, because that part of the virtual dom has been touched. While it's trivial for us to see it was not effected, the only way React could verify it is by comparing props, which is not done by default!
the only way to prevent Child02 from rendering is wrapping it with React.memo, which might be slower than just re-rendring it.
I have a React component.
#observer
export default class Tree extends Component
It is bound to an observable store
class TreeStore {
#observable nodes;
}
An instance of TreeStore is passed to the React component as a store. So, the render method is as follows.
render() {
const { store } = this.props;
// render the nodes within the store
}
Everything works as expected when I pass the store to the Tree component as a prop. But, when I pass in a new store object to the Tree component (a new instance), the Tree component is not re-rendered or refreshed.
The container component looks something like this:
render() {
return (
<div>
<Select value={this.param} onChange={this.handleParamChange} />
<Tree store={this.store} />
</div>
);
}
And handleParamChange creates a new store based on change to the dropdown.
handleParamChange() {
this.store = createAnotherStore(); // store is also observable!
}
I like to know what is happening behind the scenes. What happens when a React component (observer) is bound to a Mobx observable store? What causes the re-render to happen? If I pass it a new store, how do I rebind the component?
I walked through mobx-react/observer code. Lifecycle events are attached to the component. And componentWillMount does quite a lot of things. But not able to figure out which objects are being observed !!!. (initialRender / reactiveRender). If I send a new store in the prop, will that get observed as well?
UPDATE
Mobx works as expected. If a new store is passed as a prop, the observables continue to trigger re-renders. I had a few issues in my code. After some fixes, the code works alright. I am going to close this question. I am not deleting it. Because, if someone has similar issues, the problem is with their code and not Mobx. Hope it helps.
I am very new to React. On going through the React tutorial, I understand the need to lift the state to the parent component which ensures that the children components can stay in sync and can feed off the major chunk of data residing in the state of the parent. But then , with changing data, won't the setState in the parent fire off the re-rendering of all the children components, decreasing UI performance ? Without using flux or redux, which is the best way to position the state in a react application ?
When you change a component's state, it triggers a re-render for that component.
The re-render will create a new set of virtual elements (returned from the render function), which React uses to represent the new state of the DOM. However, unless there are differences between the virtual DOM and the real DOM, nothing will be changed.
The fact that React's virtual elements are simply lightweight object representations of actual HTML elements makes it fast enough that in most cases, you don't even need to think about the performance cost of calling render for child components.
If, however, you do find yourself with a child component that has a particularly expensive render function—you can prevent it from always re-rendering by implementing shouldComponentUpdate. This allows you to specify with fine grained control, which changes in props or state will actually trigger a component to update.
The other approach is to build a custom state management solution which explicitly ties your components together.
let state = { count: 0 };
let listenForState = null;
function ComponentA() {
let onClick = () => {
state.count += 1;
if (listenForState) listenForState(state);
};
return <button onClick={onClick}>+</button>;
}
class ComponentB extends React.Component {
constructor() {
super();
this.state = state;
}
componentWillMount() {
listenForState(state => this.setState(state));
}
render() {
return <span>{this.state.count}</span>;
}
}
However this quite quickly gets out of hand, and there aren't many situations where it would be better than just lifting state up to a shared parent.
If you find that your state driven child components are nested too deeply in the stateful parent, then it's time to look at Redux instead.
Yes, your mostly right. But you dont need to pass the state of the component to the children, you r passing only props, its not actually the same, because changing of props doesnt need to rerender your component.
There is amazing method in the component lifecycle, called shouldComponentUpdate, default its return true if only shallow equality of states objects are false (if refs are different - thats why mutate of state will not rerender component). And you can also implement this method by yourself, comparing your props to check if you need an update or not. There is a scheme how would it work.
And also, react will not rerender element if the virtual DOM was not changed. So this way you can rerender component if only his props is changed, but if you need to change props of its children - you must rerender current.
Basicly, because of these there is an advice to pull the state of application from top to the leafs component (which returns most of html). You can read about optimization more here.
And must to say :
Your code must become a spaghetti
If you will have a lot of components, which have a lot of events, based on state, so if you need some complex architecture, use Redux or some other global state manager.
If you are looking only for a State Management library, check Duix (https://www.npmjs.com/package/duix).
Redux solves a lot of problems (adding complexity). If you only want to improve the State Management, just take a look at Duix.
PS.: I created that library
Does React re-render all components and sub components every time setState() is called?
If so, why? I thought the idea was that React only rendered as little as needed - when state changed.
In the following simple example, both classes render again when the text is clicked, despite the fact that the state doesn't change on subsequent clicks, as the onClick handler always sets the state to the same value:
this.setState({'test':'me'});
I would've expected that renders would only happen if state data had changed.
Here's the code of the example, as a JS Fiddle, and embedded snippet:
var TimeInChild = React.createClass({
render: function() {
var t = new Date().getTime();
return (
<p>Time in child:{t}</p>
);
}
});
var Main = React.createClass({
onTest: function() {
this.setState({'test':'me'});
},
render: function() {
var currentTime = new Date().getTime();
return (
<div onClick={this.onTest}>
<p>Time in main:{currentTime}</p>
<p>Click me to update time</p>
<TimeInChild/>
</div>
);
}
});
ReactDOM.render(<Main/>, document.body);
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react/15.0.0/react.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react/15.0.0/react-dom.min.js"></script>
Does React re-render all components and sub-components every time setState is called?
By default - yes.
There is a method boolean shouldComponentUpdate(object nextProps, object nextState), each component has this method and it's responsible to determine "should component update (run render function)?" every time you change state or pass new props from parent component.
You can write your own implementation of shouldComponentUpdate method for your component, but default implementation always returns true - meaning always re-run render function.
Quote from official docs http://facebook.github.io/react/docs/component-specs.html#updating-shouldcomponentupdate
By default, shouldComponentUpdate always returns true to prevent
subtle bugs when the state is mutated in place, but if you are careful to
always treat the state as immutable and to read-only from props and state
in render() then you can override shouldComponentUpdate with an
implementation that compares the old props and state to their
replacements.
Next part of your question:
If so, why? I thought the idea was that React only rendered as little as needed - when the state changed.
There are two steps of what we may call "render":
Virtual DOM renders: when render method is called it returns a new virtual dom structure of the component. As I mentioned before, this render method is called always when you call setState(), because shouldComponentUpdate always returns true by default. So, by default, there is no optimization here in React.
Native DOM renders: React changes real DOM nodes in your browser only if they were changed in the Virtual DOM and as little as needed - this is that great React's feature which optimizes real DOM mutation and makes React fast.
No, React doesn't render everything when the state changes.
Whenever a component is dirty (its state changed), that component and its children are re-rendered. This, to some extent, is to re-render as little as possible. The only time when render isn't called is when some branch is moved to another root, where theoretically we don't need to re-render anything. In your example, TimeInChild is a child component of Main, so it also gets re-rendered when the state of Main changes.
React doesn't compare state data. When setState is called, it marks the component as dirty (which means it needs to be re-rendered). The important thing to note is that although render method of the component is called, the real DOM is only updated if the output is different from the current DOM tree (a.k.a diffing between the Virtual DOM tree and document's DOM tree). In your example, even though the state data hasn't changed, the time of last change did, making Virtual DOM different from the document's DOM, hence why the HTML is updated.
Yes. It calls the render() method every time we call setState only except when shouldComponentUpdate returns false.
Even though it's stated in many of the other answers here, the component should either:
implement shouldComponentUpdate to render only when state or properties change
switch to extending a PureComponent, which already implements a shouldComponentUpdate method internally for shallow comparisons.
Here's an example that uses shouldComponentUpdate, which works only for this simple use case and demonstration purposes. When this is used, the component no longer re-renders itself on each click, and is rendered when first displayed, and after it's been clicked once.
var TimeInChild = React.createClass({
render: function() {
var t = new Date().getTime();
return (
<p>Time in child:{t}</p>
);
}
});
var Main = React.createClass({
onTest: function() {
this.setState({'test':'me'});
},
shouldComponentUpdate: function(nextProps, nextState) {
if (this.state == null)
return true;
if (this.state.test == nextState.test)
return false;
return true;
},
render: function() {
var currentTime = new Date().getTime();
return (
<div onClick={this.onTest}>
<p>Time in main:{currentTime}</p>
<p>Click me to update time</p>
<TimeInChild/>
</div>
);
}
});
ReactDOM.render(<Main/>, document.body);
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react/15.0.0/react.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react/15.0.0/react-dom.min.js"></script>
It seems that the accepted answers are no longer the case when using React hooks (with primitive values, see comments on this answer for details). You can see in this code sandbox that the class component is rerendered when the state is set to the same value, while in the function component, setting the state to the same value doesn't cause a rerender.
https://codesandbox.io/s/still-wave-wouk2?file=/src/App.js
React 18 and beyond
Starting from React 18 all state updates are automatically batched. In this way, React groups multiple state updates into a single re-render for better performance.
So when you update your state, React always try to batch these updates in a group update, causing fewer render than setState calls. The behaviour is the same when using hooks.
You can read the very long explanation in the Automatic batching for React 18 announcement.
React 17 and below
In React 17 and below, only updates inside React event handlers are batched. Updates triggered from promises, setTimeout, native event handlers, or other events are not batched in React by default.
Another reason for "lost update" can be the next:
If the static getDerivedStateFromProps is defined then it is rerun in every update process according to official documentation https://reactjs.org/docs/react-component.html#updating.
so if that state value comes from props at the beginning it is overwrite in every update.
If it is the problem then U can avoid setting the state during update, you should check the state parameter value like this
static getDerivedStateFromProps(props: TimeCorrectionProps, state: TimeCorrectionState): TimeCorrectionState {
return state ? state : {disable: false, timeCorrection: props.timeCorrection};
}
Another solution is add a initialized property to state, and set it up in the first time (if the state is initialized to non null value.)
Not All Components.
the state in component looks like the source of the waterfall of state of the whole APP.
So the change happens from where the setState called. The tree of renders then get called from there. If you've used pure component, the render will be skipped.
Regardless of the well explained answers here, there may be other reasons why you don't see the change you expect post changing the props or state:
Watch out for any event.preventDefault(); in the code where you want to re-render by a state \ props change, as it will cancel any cancelable event following this statement.
You could use setState() only after comparing the current state value and the new one and they are different.
I am trying to combine Angular and React.js. I have an work example project here I have seen a couple of ways to bring the Angular and React.js together. One of the methods I have seen is to create a directive and create the React component in the link function. For example in the first part of the project to generate the React version(in red) I am using
.directive('reactElementRepeater', function() {
return {
link: function(scope, element) {
var update_react = function(oldVal, newVal){ //Called every time one of the two values change
React.renderComponent(Demo_Element({
numberOfElements: scope.myModel.numberOfElem,
numberInElements: scope.myModel.numberInElem
}), element[0]);
}
scope.$watch('myModel.numberOfElem.length', update_react);
scope.$watch('myModel.numberInElem', update_react);
}
}
});
What I want and what should happen in a React enabled application is for something in the model to be updated, then that update is sent through React and it will alter the DOM as little as possible to reflect that change. It looks like that instead of updating a bit of the DOM this will Create a new React component each time with renderComponent.
React.renderComponent() instantiates the root component, starts the
framework, and injects the markup into a raw DOM element, provided as
the second argument.
Is it actually recreating the elements each time? If that is the case is there a way to alter this so that doesn't happen?
Just to be clear I know about ngReact, I just want to know other ways to speed up Angular with React.
Yes this is fine, it's not mounting the component multiple times.
When you call React.renderComponent() the second argument is the element which react should render the component to. So react notices if you are rendering the same component to a dom element that already contains a mounted instance of the component, and does not re-mount the entire component, it just updates the properties of it instead.
You can see this in action if you make a component with componentDidMount function defined. You'll notice that componentDidMount will only execute the first time renderComponent gets called. And afterwards, subsequent calls to renderComponent on the same target dom element will not call it because the component is already mounted. Likewise getDefaultState and getDefaultProps also only get called on the first renderComponent call.
If you're asking will the render function of the component be called every time the answer is yes. But this is how react works, you want the render function to get called because props might have changed. You can block it from being called by using shouldComponentUpdate (http://facebook.github.io/react/docs/component-specs.html#updating-shouldcomponentupdate) and returning false. However react developers recommend you don't use this to block render calls unless you have specific performance problems - most of the time it should be fine to just let the render call execute as it wont cause any slow dom updates unless things have actually changed.