Taken from my comment above: "When I first started using React, I kept trying to use componentWillMount, componentWillReceiveProps, and componentWillUpdate... I

Taken from my comment above: "When I first started using React, I kept trying to use componentWillMount, componentWillReceiveProps, and componentWillUpdate... I kept getting stuck in infinite loops... new prop updates state which re-renders the component which means "new props" updates state which re-renders component etc. Or something like that...." I didn't really understand how React worked underneath and I thought these functions would be helpful. But they weren't...