How do I render sibling elements without wrapping them in a parent tag?

In most cases, having a parent tag isn't an issue.

React.createClass({
    render: function() {
        return (
            <tbody>
                <tr><td>Item 1</td></tr>
                <tr><td>Item 2</td></tr>
            </tbody>
        );
    }
});

But there are some cases where it makes sense to have sibling elements in one render function without a parent, and especially in the case of a table, you don't want to wrap a table row in a div.

React.createClass({
    render: function() {
        return (
            <tr><td>Item 1</td></tr>
            <tr><td>Item 2</td></tr>
        );
    }
});

The second example gives the following error: Adjacent XJS elements must be wrapped in an enclosing tag while parsing file.

How can I render two sibling elements without wrapping them in a <div> or something similar?

Solution 1:

This is a limitation currently, but will likely be fixed at some point in the future (there's some open issues on the github repo).

For now, you can use a function which returns an array (this is basically a stateless component):

function things(arg, onWhatever){
    return [
        <tr><td>Item 1</td></tr>,
        <tr><td>Item 2</td></tr>
    ];
}

And use that in your component.

return (
    <table><tbody>
      {things(arg1, this.handleWhatever)}
      {things(arg2, this.handleWhatever)}
    </tbody></table>
);

Update

In React 16 you will be able to return an array from render.

Another Update

You can now either return a top level array, or use <React.Fragment>.

With an array we need to place a key on each item, as React doesn't know that the two elements are constant, instead of a dynamically created list:

function RowPair() {
  return [
    <tr key="first"><td>First</td></tr>,
    <tr key="second"><td>Second</td></tr>,
  ]
}

With React.Fragment, it behaves much more like wrapping it in a <div> or similar, where a key isn't required if we're not building the children dynamically. First, we can wrap the array in a Fragment:

function RowPair() {
  return <React.Fragment>{[
    <tr key="first"><td>First</td></tr>,
    <tr key="second"><td>Second</td></tr>,
  ]}</React.Fragment>
}

And then we can eliminate the array and keys entirely:

function RowPair() {
  return <React.Fragment>
    <tr><td>First</td></tr>
    <tr><td>Second</td></tr>
  </React.Fragment>
}

Solution 2:

I know this has been an old post, but maybe my answer could be a help for newbies like me.

In React 16.2, improved support for Fragments was added.

You can now return it like this:

return (
  <>
    <tr><td>Item 1</td></tr>
    <tr><td>Item 2</td></tr>
  </>
);

You can wrap it with <></> or <Fragment></Fragment>.

If you would like to pass some attributes, only key is supported at the time of writing, and you'll have to use <Fragment /> since the short syntax <></> doesn't accept attributes.

Note: If you are going to use the short syntax, make sure that you are using Babel 7.

Source Reference

Solution 3:

Woohoo! The React team finally added this feature. As of React v16.0, you can do:

render() {
  // No need to wrap list items in an extra element!
  return [
    // Don't forget the keys :)
      <tr key="a"><td>Item 1</td></tr>,
      <tr key="b"><td>Item 2</td></tr>
  ];
}

See the full blog post explaining "New render return types: fragments and strings" here.

Solution 4:

Having a parent element is helpful in most cases, as for example, you can have a parent className which can target children elements style and a few other scenarios...

But, if you really don't want to do that, you can use React.Fragment

So simply do something like this:

<React.Fragment>
  <First />
  <Second />
  <Third />
</React.Fragment>

From version 16.2, there is a shortened version also using <>, which look like this in render function:

render() {
  return (
    <>
      <First />
      <Second />
      <Third />
    </>
  );
}

Also, if using version 16.0 and above, you can return array of elements which doesn't need parent wrapper also like below:

render() {
 return [
  <h1 key="heading">Hello from Alireza!</h1>,
  <p key="first">Here where I'm!</p>,
  <p key="second">And again here :)</p>
 ];
}

Solution 5:

We can render two sibling components by wrapping them inside React.Fragment. For e.g.

ReactDOM.render(
  <React.Fragment>
     <Item1/>
     <Item2/>
  </React.Fragment>,document.getElementById('root')
);

There is even a shorter hand for this though.

ReactDOM.render(
  <>
     <Item1/>
     <Item2/>
  </>,document.getElementById('root')
);

Wrapping the components inside the React.Fragment does not add extra nodes to DOM.