DEMYSTIFYING REACT COMPONENT INSTANCES

Hello fellow React developers! In this article we will be breaking down what React component instance is and scenarios where React component instance is at play. What is a React Component ? Before we can understand and really appreciate what a React component instance is, we first need to understand what a component itself is. Basically, components are the fundamental building blocks of any React application. They are independent, reusable pieces of code that allow you to split your application into distinct, manageable bits of logic and UI. From our knowledge of JavaScript, you can think of components in a way as what a function is. Just as we create and use functions to avoid repeating code and separate logic, components are used to divide our application into reusable visual chunks. However, they work in isolation and return HTML (via JSX) to describe what appears on the UI. Let take a look at a simple Greetings component used in a demo; Instead of writing the HTML layout for a greeting over and over again, we define it once as a component and reuse it multiple times in our application by passing different props (arguments). React Component Instances: What are they ? Now that we understand what a React component is, let's move on to React component instances. In programming, an instance is a concrete object created from a specific template (such as a JavaScript class or a Constructor function). In React, a component instance is the actual implementation of a component in a React application. It is a long-lived object that holds contextual information about a particular component. Every time a component is rendered in our application, React creates a new instance of that component. To help you visualize this, let’s take a look at a simple Counter component; // A Counter Component import React , { useState } from ' react ' ; export default function Counter () { const [ count , setCount ] = useState ( 0 ); return < button onClick = {() => setCount ( count + 1 )} > C