React - Conditional Rendering

In React, you can create distinct components that encapsulate behavior you need. Then, you can render only some of them, depending on the state of your application.

Conditional rendering in React works the same way conditions work in JavaScript. Use JavaScript operators like if or the conditional operator to create elements representing the current state, and let React update the UI to match them.

Consider these two components:

function UserGreeting(props) {
  return <h1>Welcome back!</h1>;
}

function GuestGreeting(props) {
  return <h1>Please sign up.</h1>;
}

We’ll create a Greeting component that displays either of these components depending on whether a user is logged in:

function Greeting(props) {
  const isLoggedIn = props.isLoggedIn;
  if (isLoggedIn) {
    return <UserGreeting />;
  }
  return <GuestGreeting />;
}

ReactDOM.render(
  // Try changing to isLoggedIn={true}:
  <Greeting isLoggedIn={false} />,
  document.getElementById('root')
);

Element Variables

You can use variables to store elements. This can help you conditionally render a part of the component while the rest of the output doesn’t change.

Consider these two new components representing Logout and Login buttons:

function LoginButton(props) {
  return (
    <button onClick={props.onClick}>
      Login
    </button>
  );
}

function LogoutButton(props) {
  return (
    <button onClick={props.onClick}>
      Logout
    </button>
  );
}

In the example below, we will create a stateful component called LoginControl.

It will render either or depending on its current state. It will also render a from the previous example:

class LoginControl extends React.Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);
    this.handleLoginClick = this.handleLoginClick.bind(this);
    this.handleLogoutClick = this.handleLogoutClick.bind(this);
    this.state = {isLoggedIn: false};
  }

  handleLoginClick() {
    this.setState({isLoggedIn: true});
  }

  handleLogoutClick() {
    this.setState({isLoggedIn: false});
  }

  render() {
    const isLoggedIn = this.state.isLoggedIn;
    let button;
    if (isLoggedIn) {
      button = <LogoutButton onClick={this.handleLogoutClick} />;
    } else {
      button = <LoginButton onClick={this.handleLoginClick} />;
    }

    return (
      <div>
        <Greeting isLoggedIn={isLoggedIn} />
        {button}
      </div>
    );
  }
}

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