I have been reading the React docs and came across shouldComponentUpdate(). My understanding is that everytime setState() is called, a re-render of that component will be updated.
My question is that If the value to be updated is the SAME as the current state value, would this trigger a re-render event? or I would have to manually checks for the current value and value to be updated in shouldComponentUpdate()
The official React documentation states:
The default behavior is to re-render on every state change...
https://reactjs.org/docs/react-component.html#shouldcomponentupdate
This means that by default, render() will be executed if any of a component's state or props values changes.
You can override this default behavior using shouldComponentUpdate(). Here's an example that only updates if a state value changes.
shouldComponentUpdate(nextProps, nextState) {
return this.state.someValue !== nextState.someValue;
}
Note: this example completely ignores props. So, any changes to props will not trigger render().
Adding more to #Jyothi's answer regarding implementing shouldComponentUpdate() to skip unnecessary re-renders, in React 15.3 they introduced a new concept PureComponent. From reactjs docs
The difference between them is that React.Component doesn’t implement
shouldComponentUpdate(), but React.PureComponent implements it with a
shallow prop and state comparison.
This allows to skip unnecessary calls of render in class components by just implementing PureComponent instead of the usual Component. There are a few caveats with PureComponent though, from the docs about React.PureComponent’s shouldComponentUpdate():
... only shallowly compares
the objects. If these contain complex data structures, it may produce
false-negatives for deeper differences.
... skips prop updates for the whole component subtree. Make sure all the
children components are also “pure”.
Usage of PureComponent can in some cases improve performance of your app. Moreover, it enforces you to keep state and props objects as simple as possible or even better, immutable, which might help simplify the app structure and make it cleaner.
I dont know if I understood your question correctly but react only re renders when there is difference between virtual dom and real dom.
And as Jyothi mentioned in his answer that render method will be called irrespective of the value passed in the set state function but rerendering will depend on what this render method returns.
In functional components, calling setState() with the equal value won't cause a rendering, while in a class component it does: https://dev.to/sunflower/reactjs-if-it-is-setting-a-state-with-the-same-value-will-the-component-be-re-rendered-5g24
Note that we're just talking about virtual (React) renderings here. Brower-rendering won't happen in any case - i.e. neither in the functional component nor in the class component - as long as the state (or to be more precise: the effective DOM) doesn't change.
Related
I need to know what is the meaning of shallow comparison when using PureComponent. Actually I read some treats but I could not understand the meaning of that so please simplify it.
An other question is, when we could use PureComponent and when using shouldComponentUpdate?
About Shallow Comparison you can check this answer
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36084515/how-does-shallow-compare-work-in-react#:~:text=Shallow%20compare%20is%20efficient%20way,you%20don't%20mutate%20data.&text=shallow%20comparison%20is%20when%20the,comparisons%20deeper%20into%20the%20properties.
About shouldComponentUpdate [https://en.reactjs.org/docs/react-component.html#shouldcomponentupdate]
Use shouldComponentUpdate() to let React know if a component’s output is not affected by the current change in state or props. The default behavior is to re-render on every state change, and in the vast majority of cases you should rely on the default behavior.
Basically, the component will be re-render every single change of state, if you want to prevent it, you can use the shouldComponentUpdate().
About PureComponent[https://blog.logrocket.com/pure-functional-components-in-react-16-6/]
A React component can be considered pure if it renders the same output for the same state and props. For class components like this, React provides the PureComponent base class. Class components that extend the React.PureComponent class are treated as pure components.
I do strong recommend you to read about React Hooks[https://en.reactjs.org/docs/hooks-intro.html] It makes easy to have PureComponents and to control when and how it should be re-render.
Regards.
I know about PureComponent, but from the deep thought, I got confused about it.
ShouldComponentUpdate function is invoked when state or props are changed. So, we definitely know that something in state or props are changed if ShouldComponentUpdate is invoked. And those changes should be reflected in component view also. If state or props are not changed, shouldComponentUpdate is never called.
The PureComponent provides shallow comparison between old state or props and new state or props and if they are identical, it does not render. But we already know that the fact that shouldComponentUpdate is called means that new state or props are not same as old state or props.
Logically, I am confused about it so I got to post this question. Could you please give some advice for it?
NOTE: this is my understanding, so others please feel free to comment any issues/corrections
You've made an incorrect assumption in your question. You think for a plain React.Component that if nothing has changed in state/props then shouldComponentUpdate is never called and it won't re-render. That's not true, for example if a plain component's parent re-renders and that parent passes props to the child, the child will re-render too. Even if those prop values that it's passing are actually the same (you can test this by putting a console.log in the child's render() function). However, even though the child will re-render, nothing will actually change (in terms of the DOM) since the props are the same. So technically it did an unnecessary re-render.
In a plain component, shouldComponentUpdate always returns true (assuming you haven't explicitly defined it). So if the props/state are the same it will always re-render, it's just that if there aren't any pertinent differences, the DOM won't change in any way. However, in a PureComponent it will actually do a shallow comparison of the new state/props, and only trigger a re-render if they've changed. The idea is that it implements a shouldComponentUpdate method for you.
For components that don't often want to change, doing this shallow comparison (which is relatively quick and cheap) is better than constantly just re-rendering regardless of any changes. To summarise, pure components prevent unnecessary re-renders by doing comparisons of state/props before re-rendering, and making sure they're actually different.
React Document says
React.PureComponent's shouldComponentUpdate() only shallowly compares
the objects.
Does it mean the Component will do a deep compare unless we make it a PureComponent ?
No, by default Component will re-render even if its props stay the same (by doing no compare at all), unless you decide to implement your own shouldComponentUpdate.
From docs:
render() will not be invoked if shouldComponentUpdate() returns false.
and then:
shouldComponentUpdate() is invoked before rendering when new props or
state are being received. Defaults to true.
Because of missing rep i will add this as a comment above from pwolaq:
You can really take advantage of using PureComponent when you use an immutable data structure as your app's data. When an immutable data structure is changed, we get a different object. Thats the reason a shallow compare (which is very cheap to process) will quickly detect changes.
Using redux in conjunction with seamless-immutable for example lets you build applications that only rerender specific components bound to data that is nested in a deep application data object are bound to updated without ever having to implement shouldComponentUpdate()
One thing I had learned about React is that if the props to a component don’t change, then React doesn’t bother re-rendering the component. Is that true for stateless components too? Or do they behave more like “stupid” functions and get executed every time?
For example, if I had:
import StatelessComponent from '../StatelessComponent';
export default class DocumentsTable extends React.Component {
state = {
something: 'foobar',
};
render() {
return (
<div>
{ this.state.something }
<StatelessComponent theOnlyProp='baz'>
</div>
)
}
};
When this.state.something updates its value, does <StatelessComponent> get re-rendered? Or is it “smart” enough to see that its props didn’t change, like other React components?
UPDATE 25.10.2018
Since React 16.6, you can use React.memo for functional components to prevent re-render, similarly to PureComponent for class components:
const MyComponent = React.memo((props) => {
return (
/* markup */
);
});
Also, memo does internal optimization.
And unlike a userland memo() higher-order component implementation, the one built into React can be more efficient by avoiding an extra component layer.
Blockquote
OLD ANSWER
Yes, they always re-render 1 (unless you use React.memo as explained above) if setState() is called in the component itself or one of its parents, because functional stateless components don't carry a shouldComponentUpdate. In fact, each React component is being re-rendered1 unless they implement shouldComponentUpdate.
Important to note is that calling render() doesn't mean that DOM Nodes are being manipulated in any way. The render method just serves the diff algorithm to decide which DOM Nodes need to really be attached / detached. Note that render() is not expensive, it's the DOM manipulations that are expensive. They are executed only if render() returns different virtual trees.
From React's documentation
Just to be clear, rerender in this context means calling render for all components, it doesn’t mean React will unmount and remount them. It will only apply the differences following the rules stated in the previous sections.
Just don't worry and let render() be called unless your component is huge, then you're better off with stateful Component that implements shouldComponentUpdate().
Look here for an interesting discussion.
1 means that render() function of the component is called, not that the underlying DOM node is being manipulated.
See react does not only rerenders only If props are changed it even rerenders itself if any state change is there. In your case the component will rerender as your state is changing. The way react works is based on an algorithm named Reconciliation, what this algorithm does is that it compares your virtual DOM with real DOM and if it sees any change then it rerender your actual DOM by replacing it with your virtual DOM so any change in state will cause rerendering of the whole component.
Will a Stateless component re-render if its props have not changed?
Yes. Stateless render function will be called even if nothing has changed. However, React will in the reconciliation phase compare the virtual DOM (generated by the render function) against the existing DOM. This is far in the pipeline, hence not ideal if the render function was costly to compute.
A Pure component does have a default shallow comparison of the property and would have stopped the render to be executed. See the Pure component as a normal class React component that has a shouldComponentUpdate that compare with a triple equal the existing properties and the new one.
That being said, you can wrap your Stateless component into a Pure Component by using Recompose.pure (https://github.com/acdlite/recompose/blob/master/docs/API.md#pure) which will automatically perform, like the Pure Component, a shallow comparison without compromising on the short syntax of the Stateless component.
import StatelessComponent from '../StatelessComponent';
const PureChildFromStatelessComponent = Recompose.pure(StatelessComponent);
// ...
<PureChildFromStatelessComponent ... />
I haven't been able to find a clear answer to this, hope this isn't repetitive.
I am using React + Redux for a simple chat app. The app is comprised of an InputBar, MessageList, and Container component. The Container (as you might imagine) wraps the other two components and is connected to the store. The state of my messages, as well as current message (the message the user is currently typing) is held in the Redux store. Simplified structure:
class ContainerComponent extends Component {
...
render() {
return (
<div id="message-container">
<MessageList
messages={this.props.messages}
/>
<InputBar
currentMessage={this.props.currentMessage}
updateMessage={this.props.updateMessage}
onSubmit={this.props.addMessage}
/>
</div>
);
}
}
The issue I'm having occurs when updating the current message. Updating the current message triggers an action that updates the store, which updates the props passing through container and back to the InputBar component.
This works, however a side effect is that my MessageList component is getting re-rendered every time this happens. MessageList does not receive the current message and doesn't have any reason to update. This is a big issue because once the MessageList becomes big, the app becomes noticeably slower every time current message updates.
I've tried setting and updating the current message state directly within the InputBar component (so completely ignoring the Redux architecture) and that "fixes" the problem, however I would like to stick with Redux design pattern if possible.
My questions are:
If a parent component is updated, does React always update all the direct children within that component?
What is the right approach here?
If a parent component is updated, does React always update all the direct children within that component?
No. React will only re-render a component if shouldComponentUpdate() returns true. By default, that method always returns true to avoid any subtle bugs for newcomers (and as William B pointed out, the DOM won't actually update unless something changed, lowering the impact).
To prevent your sub-component from re-rendering unnecessarily, you need to implement the shouldComponentUpdate method in such a way that it only returns true when the data has actually changed. If this.props.messages is always the same array, it could be as simple as this:
shouldComponentUpdate(nextProps) {
return (this.props.messages !== nextProps.messages);
}
You may also want to do some sort of deep comparison or comparison of the message IDs or something, it depends on your requirements.
EDIT: After a few years many people are using functional components. If that's the case for you then you'll want to check out React.memo. By default functional components will re-render every time just like the default behavior of class components. To modify that behavior you can use React.memo() and optionally provide an areEqual() function.
If a parent component is updated, does React always update all the direct children within that component?
-> Yes , by default if parent changes all its direct children are re-rendered but that re-render doesn't necessarily changes the actual DOM , thats how React works , only visible changes are updated to real DOM.
What is the right approach here?
-> To prevent even re-rendering of virtual DOM so to boost your performance further you can follow any of the following techniques:
Apply ShouldComponentUpdate Lifecycle method - This is applied only if your child component is class based , you need to check the current props value with the prev props value ,and if they are true simply return false.
Use Pure Component -> This is just a shorter version to above method , again works with class based components
Use React memo -> this is the best way to prevent Rerendering even if you have functional components ,you simply need to wrap your components export with React.memo like : export default React.memo(MessageList)
Hope that helps!
If parent component props have changed it will re-render all of its children which are made using React.Component statement.
Try making your <MessageList> component a React.PureComponent to evade this.
According to React docs: In the future React may treat shouldComponentUpdate() as a hint rather than a strict directive, and returning false may still result in a re-rendering of the component. check this link for more info
Hope this helps anyone who is looking for the right way to fix this.
If you're using map to render child components and using a unique key on them (something like uuid()), maybe switch back to using the i from the map as key. It might solve the re-rendering issue.
Not sure about this approach, but sometimes it fixes the issue