Higher-Order Components (HOCs) for Beginners

Preface

NOTE: This was originally posted on my personal website.

I’m writing this because every other article — including the official React documentation on Higher-Order Components — confused the hell out of me as a beginner. I understood that Higher-Order Components were a thing, but didn’t understand how they were useful. This article aims to clear up some of the confusion about Higher-Order Components(HOCs).

Before we can understand HOCs we must first understand some things about functions in Javascript.

Brief Introduction to ES6 Arrow Functions

This article will provide examples solely using ES6 arrow functions. If you’ve never seen an arrow function before, they are essentially equivalent to regular function expressions. The code below shows the differences between regular functions and arrow functions.

function () {  return 42}

// same as:() => 42

// same as:() => {  return 42}

function person(name) {  return { name: name }}

// same as:(name) => {  return { name: name }}

Read the arrow function documentation on MDN for a more complete understanding.

Functions as Values and Partial Application

Just like numbers, strings, booleans, etc., functions are values. That means that you can pass functions around like any other data. You can pass a function as an argument to another function:

const execute = (someFunction) => someFunction()

execute(() => alert('Executed'))

And you can return a function from a function.

const getOne = () => () => 1

getOne()()

The reason we have two () after getOne is that the first application of the function returns another. To illustrate:

const getOne = () => () => 1

getOne//=> () => () => 1

getOne()//=> () => 1

getOne()()//=> 1

The helpful thing about returning functions from functions is that we can write functions that keep track of their initial input. For example, the function below accepts a number as an argument and returns a function that multiplies that argument by a new one:

const multiply = (x) => (y) => x * y

multiply(5)(20)

This example works the same as getOne, each parenthesis applies some input to the function. In this case we are assigning x to 5 and y to 20.

const multiply = (x) => (y) => x * y

multiply//=> (x) => (y) => x * y

multiply(5)//=> (y) => 5 * y

multiply(5)(20)//=> 5 * 20

When we call the function multiply with only one argument we are partially applying the function. When we call multiply(5) we get a function that will multiply it's input by 5. If we call multiply(7) we get a function that will multiply it's input by 7, and so on. We can use partial application to create new functions with a predefined input:

const multiply = (x) => (y) => x * y

const multiplyByFive = multiply(5)const multiplyBy100 = multiply(100)

multiplyByFive(20)//=> 100multiply(5)(20)//=> 100

multiplyBy100(5)//=> 500multiply(100)(5)//=> 500

This may not seem super useful at first. However, you can use partial application to write code that is easier to read and reason about. For example, we can replace [styled-components](https://www.styled-components.com/docs/basics#adapting-based-on-props) complex function interpolation syntax with something a bit cleaner.

// beforeconst Button = styled.button`  background-color: ${({ theme }) => theme.bgColor}  color: ${({ theme }) => theme.textColor}`

<Button theme={themes.primary}>Submit</Button>

// afterconst fromTheme = (prop) => ({ theme }) => theme[prop]

const Button = styled.button`  background-color: ${fromTheme("bgColor")}  color: ${fromTheme("textColor")}`

<Button theme={themes.primary}>Submit</Button>

We create a function that accepts a string as a parameter: fromTheme("textColor"), which returns a function accepting an object with a theme property: ({ theme }) => theme[prop], which we then attempt to lookup via the initial string we passed in "textColor". We could go further and write functions like backgroundColor and textColorthat partially apply the fromTheme function:

const fromTheme = (prop) => ({ theme }) => theme[prop]const backgroundColor = fromTheme("bgColor")const textColor = fromTheme("textColor")

const Button = styled.button`  background-color: ${backgroundColor}  color: ${textColor}`

Higher-Order Functions

Higher-order functions are defined as functions that accept a function as an argument. You may already be familiar with higher-order functions if you’ve ever used a function like [map](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/map). If you aren't familiar with map, it is a function that loops over and applies a function to every element in an array. For example, you can square an array of numbers like so:

const square = (x) => x * x

[1, 2, 3].map(square)//=> [ 1, 4, 9 ]

We can write our own version of map to illustrate this concept:

const map = (fn, array) => {  const mappedArray = []

  for (let i = 0; i < array.length; i++) {    mappedArray.push(      // apply fn with the current element of the array      fn(array[i])    )  }

  return mappedArray}

We can then use our map to do something like square an array of numbers:

const square = (x) => x * x

console.log(map(square, [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]))//=> [ 1, 4, 9, 16, 25 ]

Or return an array of <li> React Elements:

const HeroList = ({ heroes }) => (  <ul>    {map((hero) => (      <li key={hero}>{hero}</li>    ), heroes)}  </ul>)

<HeroList heroes=[  "Wonder Woman",  "Black Widow",  "Spider Man",  "Storm",  "Deadpool"]/>/*=> (  <ul>    <li>Wonder Woman</li>    <li>Black Widow</li>    <li>Spider Man</li>    <li>Storm</li>    <li>Deadpool</li>  </ul>)*/

Higher-Order Components

We know that a higher-order function is a function that accepts a function as an argument. In React, any function that returns [JSX](https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/jsx-in-depth.html) is known as a Stateless Functional Component, or Functional Component for short. A basic Functional Component looks like this:

const Title = (props) => <h1>{props.children}</h1>

<Title>Higher-Order Components(HOCs) for React Newbies</Title>//=> <h1>Higher-Order Components(HOCs) for React Newbies</h1>

A Higher-Order Component is a function that accepts a Component as an argument and returns a Component. How you use the passed Component is up to you. You can even completely disregard it:

// Technically an HOCconst ignore = (anything) => (props) => <h1>:)</h1>

const IgnoreHeroList = ignore(HeroList)<IgnoreHeroList />//=> <h1>:)</h1>

You can write an HOC that transforms it’s input to uppercase:

const yell = (PassedComponent) =>  ({ children, ...props }) =>    <PassedComponent {...props}>      {children.toUpperCase()}!    </PassedComponent>

const Title = (props) => <h1>{props.children}</h1>const AngryTitle = yell(Title)

<AngryTitle>Whatever</AngryTitle>//=> <h1>WHATEVER!</h1>

You can also return a Stateful Component, because classes in Javascript are syntax sugar for functions. This allows you to hook into React Lifecycle methods like componentDidMount. This is where HOCs become really useful. We can now do things like pass down the result of an HTTP request as props to a Functional Component.

const withGists = (PassedComponent) =>  class WithGists extends React.Component {    state = {      gists: []    }

    componentDidMount() {      fetch("https://api.github.com/gists/public")      .then((r) => r.json())      .then((gists) => this.setState({        gists: gists      }))    }

    render() {      return (        <PassedComponent          {...this.props}          gists={this.state.gists}        />      )    }  }

const Gists = ({ gists }) => (  <pre>{JSON.stringify(gists, null, 2)}</pre>)

const GistsList = withGists(Gists)

<GistsList />//=> Before api request finishes:// <Gists gists={[]} />// //=> After api request finishes:// <Gists gists={[//  { /* … */ },//  { /* … */ },//  { /* … */ }// ]} />

You can call withGists on any component and it will pass down the result of the gists api call. You can see a more fleshed out example of this here.

Conclusion: HOCs are 🔥 🔥 🔥

Redux uses an HOC, [connect](https://github.com/reactjs/react-redux/blob/master/docs/api.md#connectmapstatetoprops-mapdispatchtoprops-mergeprops-options) to pass values from your application store to "connected" components. It also does some error checking and component lifecycle optimizations that, if done manually would cause you to write a ton of boilerplate code.

If you find yourself writing a lot of code in different places that does the same thing, you may be able to refactor that code into a reusable HOC.

HOCs are really expressive and you can build a lot of cool things with them. However, because they are so expressive you can go overboard with them if you want to.

Try to keep your HOCs simple, and aim to write code that doesn’t require you to read a long article to understand it.

Additional Exercises

Here are some exercises to solidify your understanding of HOCs:

Write an HOC that reverses it’s input
Write an HOC that supplies data from an API to it’s Passed Component
Write an HOC that implements [shouldComponentUpdate](https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/react-component.html#shouldcomponentupdate) to avoid reconciliation.
Write an HOC that uses [React.Children.toArray](https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/react-api.html#react.children.toarray) to sort the children passed to it's Passed Component.