Dynamically add child components in React

You need to pass your components as children, like this:

var App = require('./App.js');
var SampleComponent = require('./SampleComponent.js');
ReactDOM.render(
    <App>
        <SampleComponent name="SomeName"/> 
    <App>, 
    document.body
);

And then append them in the component's body:

var App = React.createClass({
    render: function() {
        return (
            <div>
                <h1>App main component! </h1>
                {
                    this.props.children
                }
            </div>
        );
    }
});

You don't need to manually manipulate HTML code, React will do that for you. If you want to add some child components, you just need to change props or state it depends. For example:

var App = React.createClass({

    getInitialState: function(){
        return [
            {id:1,name:"Some Name"}
        ]
    },

    addChild: function() {
        // State change will cause component re-render
        this.setState(this.state.concat([
            {id:2,name:"Another Name"}
        ]))
    }

    render: function() {
        return (
            <div>
                <h1>App main component! </h1>
                <button onClick={this.addChild}>Add component</button>
                {
                    this.state.map((item) => (
                        <SampleComponent key={item.id} name={item.name}/>
                    ))
                }
            </div>
        );
    }

});

Sharing my solution here, based on Chris' answer. Hope it can help others.

I needed to dynamically append child elements into my JSX, but in a simpler way than conditional checks in my return statement. I want to show a loader in the case that the child elements aren't ready yet. Here it is:

export class Settings extends React.PureComponent {
  render() {
    const loading = (<div>I'm Loading</div>);
    let content = [];
    let pushMessages = null;
    let emailMessages = null;

    if (this.props.pushPreferences) {
       pushMessages = (<div>Push Content Here</div>);
    }
    if (this.props.emailPreferences) {
      emailMessages = (<div>Email Content Here</div>);
    }

    // Push the components in the order I want
    if (emailMessages) content.push(emailMessages);
    if (pushMessages) content.push(pushMessages);

    return (
      <div>
        {content.length ? content : loading}
      </div>
    )
}

Now, I do realize I could also just put {pushMessages} and {emailMessages} directly in my return() below, but assuming I had even more conditional content, my return() would just look cluttered.

Dynamically add child components in React

Related

Recent Posts