[sebmarkbage]

Hi, this was a tough call for us to make. We wanted to everything we could to avoid extra bloat for everyone. In the end, most people tend to use some kind of extra helper, even if it's not JSX. E.g. a custom library or another third party language.

One reason for this change is to make it possible to use object literals or record syntax where that is more appropriate than function calls. We don't currently recommend it because there's no validation in that case, so you probably want static analysis to catch errors. I would encourage you to play with the idea of using object literals instead of function calls though.

One compelling reason for this change is that in 0.13 you will be able to build components using plain CoffeeScript classes instead of relying on React.createClass. So, in the end, you will be getting some of that bloat/overhead back.

We're definitely not making React depend on JSX. We will continue to support non-JSX and fully support compile-to-JS languages. Unfortunately, that sometimes means a trade-off. In this case trading React.createClass for React.createFactory. Some would've preferred it be the opposite tradeoff but React.createFactory gives us more benefits than the opposite.

[aboodman]

More information in breaking changes would definitely be appreciated.

I can't decode what "Composite Component functions can no longer be called directly" means exactly in terms of code that will no longer work.

I definitely use React without JSX in plain JavaScript and I really love it. I'm kind of dreading what this little snippet means when I try to update to 0.13.

[gcanti]

> One reason for this change is to make it possible to use object literals or record syntax where that is more appropriate than function calls

I think this will be the most revolutionary aspect in the next months, both for development and tests. I wrote an article explaining why I have this opinion:

https://gcanti.github.io/2014/10/29/understanding-react-and-...

[jbhatab]

Thanks for the response.

Could you give me a quick example of calling a component with object literals instead of functions? I'm not understanding how that will play out in the final code.

Also, isn't it just adding React.createFactory, not replacing React.createClass?

[sebmarkbage]

In CoffeeScript it might look something like this:

element = type: 'div' props: className: 'container', children: [ type: 'span', props: className: 'foo' type: CustomClass, props: className: 'bar' ]

(This doesn't fully work in 0.12 because we also have some extra properties on there but that's the direction we're going.)

0.12 is just adding React.createFactory. 0.13 will optionally replace React.createClass.

We do this so that there's a seamless upgrade path. We have to remove the warnings to fix the classes.

[kaoD]

I guessed that indentation:

    element =
      type: 'div'
      props: className: 'container'
      children: [
          type: 'span'
          props: className: 'foo'
      ,
          type: CustomClass
          props: className: 'bar' 
      ]

[jbhatab]

Thanks for the answers.

I will say that I do really like the syntax of coffeescript as is though,

  div className: 'container',
    span className: 'foo'
    CustomClass classname: 'bar'

It reminds me a lot of slim and reads nicely.