React.ReactNode VS JSX.Element
In React, ReactNode
and JSX.Element
are both types used to define the type of a component's children. However, they represent slightly different things.
JSX.Element
represents a single JSX element, while ReactNode
represents any valid type that can be rendered as a child of a React component. This includes not only JSX elements, but also strings, numbers, arrays, and other types.
Here's an example to illustrate the difference:
import React, { ReactNode } from 'react';
type Props = {
children: ReactNode;
};
function MyComponent({ children }: Props) {
return (
<div>
{children}
</div>
);
}
function App() {
return (
<MyComponent>
<h1>Hello, world!</h1>
<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
</MyComponent>
);
}
In the example above, MyComponent
accepts a single prop called children
, which is of type ReactNode
. This means that the component can accept any valid type as its children.
In the App
component, we pass two JSX elements (<h1>
and <p>
) as children to MyComponent
. These JSX elements are both of type JSX.Element
.
If we tried to pass a string, number, or array as a child to MyComponent
, it would also be valid, because all of these types are included in the ReactNode
type.
function App() {
return (
<MyComponent>
123
['an', 'array', 'of', 'strings']
</MyComponent>
);
}
In the example above, we're passing a number and an array of strings as children to MyComponent
, and both are valid because they are included in the ReactNode
type.
To provide an example of JSX.Element
, consider the following code:
import React from 'react';
type Props = {
element: JSX.Element;
};
function MyComponent({ element }: Props) {
return (
<div>
{element}
</div>
);
}
function App() {
return (
<MyComponent element={<h1>Hello, world!</h1>} />
);
}
In the example above, MyComponent
accepts a single prop called element
, which is of type JSX.Element
. This means that the component can accept a single JSX element as its child.
In the App
component, we pass a single JSX element (<h1>
) as a child to MyComponent
. This JSX element is of type JSX.Element
.
If we tried to pass a string, number, or array as a child to MyComponent
, it would not be valid, because these types are not included in the JSX.Element
type.
JSX.Element is a type in React that represents a single JSX element. It is used to define the type of a component's child and represents a tree of React elements. It can include any valid HTML-like syntax, such as HTML tags, custom components, or plain text.