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You can use React without JSX. It is especially easy if you are using CoffeeScript which makes the syntax quite terse. I personally like JSX. It is more of a v

by jasim 12y ago

You can use React without JSX. It is especially easy if you are using CoffeeScript which makes the syntax quite terse. I personally like JSX. It is more of a variant of Javascript that lets us mix HTML into JS seamlessly. It was inspired from XHP (https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/xhp-a-new-way-to-write-php/294003943919 https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/xhp-a-ne...), a PHP extension developed and used by Facebook that lets PHP understand XML. I think that the cross-pollination of this idea into React might be one of the best things to have happened to front-end development in the recent past. JSX is different from HTML in a few simple ways (http://facebook.github.io/react/docs/jsx-in-depth.html http://facebook.github.io/react/docs/jsx-in-depth.html): - All HTML attributes are written in lowerCamelCase, like so: contentEditable, maxLength etc. React has a wonderful "is this what you meant?"-style warning system for when we slip-up on these details. More on HTML attributes in JSX is here: http://facebook.github.io/react/docs/tags-and-attributes.html http://facebook.github.io/react/docs/tags-and-attributes.htm... - You can't use `class` to denote CSS class names. It is always `className`. You are going to forget this as you copy-paste a FontAwesome icon definition or Bootstrap snippet into the project and wonder what went wrong. But practice makes perfect. - If you want to write inline styles, the style attribute should be written as a Javascript hash (it is actually a blessing in disguise). React documents it here: http://facebook.github.io/react/tips/inline-styles.html http://facebook.github.io/react/tips/inline-styles.html. I haven't found any other incidental quirks in JSX, and it integrates nicely with Javascript in practice. It is however different from the way things have always been done, which can be a good reason for resistance.

aikah 12y ago
Sure,but you need to learn JSX to read code exemples around the web.So you cant really use React without knowing JSX. That's a subtle thing but important enough when you're working on big projects.
- dandelany 12y ago
  Sure, but if you can read HTML and you've read the above list of caveats: congratulations, you can now read JSX. The attributes are simply passed to children as props. There's really not much to it.
- dkersten 12y ago
  I don't think its a big deal. I use ClojureScirpt and Om, but often read React sample code (sepecially the React-bootstrap snippets). JSX doesn't map to what my ClojureScript code looks like at all, and neither does the pure JS React code, but I don't find it hard to read or understand at all and its fairly easy to learn what I need from it.

by jasim 12y ago

aikah 12y ago

Sure,but you need to learn JSX to read code exemples around the web.So you cant really use React without knowing JSX. That's a subtle thing but important enough when you're working on big projects.

dandelany 12y ago
Sure, but if you can read HTML and you've read the above list of caveats: congratulations, you can now read JSX. The attributes are simply passed to children as props. There's really not much to it.
dkersten 12y ago
I don't think its a big deal. I use ClojureScirpt and Om, but often read React sample code (sepecially the React-bootstrap snippets). JSX doesn't map to what my ClojureScript code looks like at all, and neither does the pure JS React code, but I don't find it hard to read or understand at all and its fairly easy to learn what I need from it.