Rendering is the process during which React moves down the component tree starting at the root, looking for all the components flagged for update, asking them to describe their desired UI structure based on the current combination of props
and state
. For each flagged component, React will call its render()
method (for class components) or FunctionComponent()
(for function components), and save the output produced after converting the JSX result into a plain JS object, using React.createElement()
.
After collecting the render output from the entire component tree, React will diff the new tree (the virtual DOM) with the current DOM tree and collect the list of changes that need to be made to the DOM to produce the desired UI structure. After this process, known as reconciliation, React applies all the calculated changes to the DOM.
Conceptually, this work is divided into two phases:
After the commit phase is complete, React will run componentDidMount
and componentDidUpdate
lifecycle methods, as well as useLayoutEffect()
and, after a short timeout, useEffect()
hooks.
Two key takeaways here are the following:
After the initial render has completed, there are a few different things that will cause a re-render:
this.setState()
(class components)this.forceUpdate()
(class components)useState()
setters (function components)useReducer()
dispatches (function components)ReactDOM.render()
again (on the root component)React's default behavior is to recursively render all child components inside of it when a parent component is rendered. This means that it does not care if a component's props
have changed - as long as the parent component rendered, its children will render unconditionally.
To put this another way, calling setState()
in the root component without any other changes, will cause React to re-render every single component in the component tree. Most likely, most of the components will return the exact same render output as the last render, meaning React will not have to make any changes to the DOM, but the rendering and diffing calculations will be performed regardless, taking time and effort.
Snippet collection
Understand the fundamentals of React's rendering process as well as more advanced techniques with this series of articles.
React, Render
Take a deeper dive into React's rendering process and understand the role of the Context API and Redux in it.
React, Render
Take a deeper dive into React's rendering process and understand how to make small yet powerful tweaks to optimize performance.
React, Components
Renders a tag input field.