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Akash Shyam
Akash Shyam

Posted on • Edited on

<Fragment> vs <></>

Introduction

Hey Guys 👋, hope you're having a great weekend. Today, I'm going to speak about the pros and cons of and <>. I'll also compare them and give you my opinion on what should be used.

What is a Fragment

In jsx, we are not allowed to return more than 1 child element. For example -

Allowed -

function myDemo() {
   return <p>Demo</p>
}
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Not allowed

function myDemo() {
   return (
      <p>Demo</p>
      <p>Bad code</p>
   )
}
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So, what used to happen was that developers used to put in a div surrounding the adjacent elements -

function myDemo() {
   return (
      <div>
          <p>Demo</p>
          <p>Bad code</p>
      </div>
   )
}
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This approach of adding a div added an extra element into the DOM and sometime messed up the styling. So, there was a feature in react called React.Fragment. It was used like this -

function myDemo() {
   return (
      <React.Fragment>
          <p>Demo</p>
          <p>Bad code</p>
      </React.Fragment>
   )
}
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React.Fragment acted as a parent element for the adjacent JSX elements however it was not added into the DOM.

In react 16.2, <></> was introduced.<></> is basically an empty JSX element that does the same functionality

The Comparison

According to me, React.Fragment is much clearer and it's obvious that it acts as a fragment. On the other hand, <></> may seem like a bug to beginners who are not aware of React.Fragment

That's all for now, hope you guys liked the post. Share your views in the comments.

Top comments (3)

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jackmellis profile image
Jack

<> is shorter, doesnt require a specific import, and is no harder to explain to a new developer than the fragment component.

That's why I prefer it, but in the grand scheme of things it really doesnt matter as long as you're consistent right?

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akashshyam profile image
Akash Shyam

Exactly, use the same thing across the whole codebase

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prog profile image
prog

you can't add properties like key with <></> syntax