Props and state are related. The state of one component will often become the props of a child component. Props are passed to the child within the render method of the parent as the second argument to React.createElement() or, if you're using JSX, the more familiar tag attributes.
<MyChild name={this.state.childsName} />
The parent's state value of childsName becomes the child's this.props.name. From the child's perspective, the name prop is immutable. If it needs to be changed, the parent should just change its internal state:
this.setState({ childsName: 'New name' });
and React will propagate it to the child for you. A natural follow-on question is: what if the child needs to change its name prop? This is usually done through child events and parent callbacks. The child might expose an event called, for example, onNameChanged. The parent would then subscribe to the event by passing a callback handler.
<MyChild name={this.state.childsName} onNameChanged={this.handleName} />
The child would pass its requested new name as an argument to the event callback by calling, e.g., this.props.onNameChanged('New name'), and the parent would use the name in the event handler to update its state.
handleName: function(newName) {
this.setState({ childsName: newName });
}
props vs state
tl;dr If a Component needs to alter one of its attributes at some point in time, that attribute should be part of its state, otherwise it should just be a prop for that Component.
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props**
Props (short for properties) are a Component's configuration. They are received from above and immutable as far as the Component receiving them is concerned. A Component cannot change its props, but it is responsible for putting together the props of its child Components. Props do not have to just be data -- callback functions may be passed in as props.
**
state**
The state is a data structure that starts with a default value when a Component mounts. It may be mutated across time, mostly as a result of user events.
A Component manages its own state internally. Besides setting an initial state, it has no business fiddling with the state of its children. You might conceptualize state as private to that component.
Changing props and state
props state
Can get initial value from parent Component? Yes Yes
Can be changed by parent Component? Yes No
Can set default values inside Component?* Yes Yes
Can change inside Component? No Yes
Can set initial value for child Components? Yes Yes
Can change in child Components? Yes No
Note that both props and state initial values received from parents override default values defined inside a Component.
Should this Component have state?
State is optional. Since state increases complexity and reduces predictability, a Component without state is preferable. Even though you clearly can't do without state in an interactive app, you should avoid having too many Stateful Components.
Component types
Stateless Component Only props, no state. There's not much going on besides the render() function. Their logic revolves around the props they receive. This makes them very easy to follow, and to test.
Stateful Component Both props and state. These are used when your component must retain some state. This is a good place for client-server communication (XHR, web sockets, etc.), processing data and responding to user events. These sort of logistics should be encapsulated in a moderate number of Stateful Components, while all visualization and formatting logic should move downstream into many Stateless Components.
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