ES6 React Redux syntax clarification - reactjs

Question

I'm new to ES6 and Redux. Im looking at some code and trying to understand what is going on in this new ES6 syntax.
I feel like this may be simple but i am not understanding it and it might help someone else in a similar position to me.
i want to know how the following code is creating a react element. im familiar with the React.createClass method, but that doesnt seem to be stated here or at least not explicitly. i can see React is imported, but it isnt mentioned in the rest of the code. so then how the FileTable get turned into a react component?
I can see the const variable FileTable seems to contain what would usually go in the render method of React.createClass, but if that is the case, where would methods like componentDidMount, componentDidUpdate, etc be defined?
Any help on this is greatly appreciated.
import React, { PropTypes } from 'react';
import { connect } from 'react-redux';
import * as actions from '../actions';
const FileTable = ({ fileList, getFileList}) => {
return (
<ul className="filterable-table">
{fileList.map((file)=><li>{file.fileName}</li>)}
</ul>
);
};
FileTable.propTypes = {
fileList: PropTypes.array,
};
const mapStateToProps = (state) => {
return {
fileList: state.fileList
};
};
const mapDispatchToProps = (dispatch) => {
return {
getFileList: () => dispatch(actions.getFileList())
};
};
export default connect(
mapStateToProps,
mapDispatchToProps
)(FileTable);

Answer 1

You can create react components in 3 ways - React.createClass, ES6 class or
Stateless (pure) function component. This is a stateless component, which means that it doesn't have state, life cycle methods (like componentDidMount or componentDidUpdate), and refs, and as you surmised it's similar to the render method of a react class.
Whenever you need a purely representational dumb component you can use a stateless component, due to its brevity. It goes nicely with redux, as the connect create a smart component that wraps the stateless method.
Regarding performance, stateless components don't have any performance gain over ES6 class component without state. However, Facebook stated that in the future there will be some optimizations.

Answer 2

It doesn't have to be declared here as a React component; React knows about pure functions.
Pure functions don't need to inherit from Component. They're not appropriate for all component types, but for simple HTML renders they're preferred (e.g., see eslint-plugin-react prefer-stateless-function.
Pure functions don't have component lifecycles, associated methods, etc.