In the past, JavaScript errors inside components used to corrupt React’s internal state and cause it to [emit](https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/4026) [cryptic](https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/6895) [errors](https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/8579) on next renders. These errors were always caused by an earlier error in the application code, but React did not provide a way to handle them gracefully in components, and could not recover from them.
A common pattern in React is for a component to return multiple elements. Fragments let you group a list of children without adding extra nodes to the DOM.
A higher-order component (HOC) is an advanced technique in React for reusing component logic. HOCs are not part of the React API, per se. They are a pattern that emerges from React's compositional nature.
React can be used in any web application. It can be embedded in other applications and, with a little care, other applications can be embedded in React. This guide will examine some of the more common use cases, focusing on integration with [jQuery](https://jquery.com/) and [Backbone](https://backbonejs.org/), but the same ideas can be applied to integrating components with any existing code.
JSX is not a requirement for using React. Using React without JSX is especially convenient when you don't want to set up compilation in your build environment.
React provides a declarative API so that you don't have to worry about exactly what changes on every update. This makes writing applications a lot easier, but it might not be obvious how this is implemented within React. This article explains the choices we made in React's "diffing" algorithm so that component updates are predictable while being fast enough for high-performance apps.
The term ["render prop"](https://cdb.reacttraining.com/use-a-render-prop-50de598f11ce) refers to a technique for sharing code between React components using a prop whose value is a function.
In most cases, we recommend using [controlled components](/docs/forms.html#controlled-components) to implement forms. In a controlled component, form data is handled by a React component. The alternative is uncontrolled components, where form data is handled by the DOM itself.
Chris Wilson
4 years ago
GitHub