React provides a `ReactTransitionGroup` addon component as a low-level API for animation, and a `ReactCSSTransitionGroup` for easily implementing basic CSS animations and transitions.
`ReactCSSTransitionGroup` is based on `ReactTransitionGroup` and is an easy way to perform CSS transitions and animations when a React component enters or leaves the DOM. It's inspired by the excellent [ng-animate](http://www.nganimate.org/) library.
### Getting Started
`ReactCSSTransitionGroup` is the interface to `ReactTransitions`. This is a simple element that wraps all of the components you are interested in animating. Here's an example where we fade list items in and out.
In this component, when a new item is added to `ReactCSSTransitionGroup` it will get the `example-enter` CSS class and the `example-enter-active` CSS class added in the next tick. This is a convention based on the `transitionName` prop.
You'll notice that when you try to remove an item `ReactCSSTransitionGroup` keeps it in the DOM. If you're using an unminified build of React with add-ons you'll see a warning that React was expecting an animation or transition to occur. That's because `ReactCSSTransitionGroup` keeps your DOM elements on the page until the animation completes. Try adding this CSS:
You can disable animating `enter` or `leave` animations if you want. For example, sometimes you may want an `enter` animation and no `leave` animation, but `ReactCSSTransitionGroup` waits for an animation to complete before removing your DOM node. You can add `transitionEnter={false}` or `transitionLeave={false}` props to `ReactCSSTransitionGroup` to disable these animations.
> When using `ReactCSSTransitionGroup`, there's no way for your components to be notified when a transition has ended or to perform any more complex logic around animation. If you want more fine-grained control, you can use the lower-level `ReactTransitionGroup` API which provides the hooks you need to do custom transitions.
`ReactTransitionGroup` is the basis for animations. When children are declaratively added or removed from it (as in the example above) special lifecycle hooks are called on them.
This is called at the same time as `componentDidMount()` for components added to an existing `TransitionGroup`. It will block other animations from occurring until `callback` is called. It will not be called on the initial render of a `TransitionGroup`.
This is called when the child has been removed from the `ReactTransitionGroup`. Though the child has been removed, `ReactTransitionGroup` will keep it in the DOM until `callback` is called.
### `componentDidLeave()`
This is called when the `willLeave``callback` is called (at the same time as `componentWillUnmount`).
By default `ReactTransitionGroup` renders as a `span`. You can change this behavior by providing a `component` prop. For example, here's how you would render a `<ul>`:
Every DOM component is under `React.DOM`. However, `component` does not need to be a DOM component. It can be any React component you want; even ones you've written yourself!