RFC: React forceRemount

[syranide]

We support uncontrolled components (although we do not necessarily encourage them) and it seems to me that this is a utility that is of relevance to a handful of such use-cases, especially in more complex situations. I.e. where you have a stateful component which you need to reset, say a rich-text editor or in my case of ReactSWF a running SWF, in response to some user action. EDIT: Think of it as a complement to React.findDOMNode(inputRef).value = 'foobar'.

This can currently be worked around by providing a monotonic key, but that's really just a hack and not a neat solution.

This is very much in the more obscure end of the spectrum but seems like a missing feature in-terms of being "feature complete" for uncontrolled components. So I'm not really going to push hard for this (especially as it could be really obscure and the above hack might really be the best trade-off, also considering batching).

[sophiebits]

Not sure what your proposed API is? Can you unmount and then remount?

[syranide]

@spicyj Think thisOrRef.forceUpdate() but instead thisOrRef.forceRemount() I guess. So effectively forceUpdate() but rather than ignoring shouldComponentUpdate it will ignore and fail the internal shouldUpdateReactComponent instead, i.e. it will be unmounted and mounted just as if its key had changed.

[waldreiter]

This would be a nice solution for some cases. But how would this work when everything gets rerendered from the top?

[syranide]

@cody Just like forceUpdate (which is like setState + internal variable). So it's a regular, possibly batched, update like everything else but with an internal flag specifying that it must not pass the internal shouldUpdateReactComponent. (EDIT: So if the component ends up being unmounted by the parent then the flag will simply have no effect, so everything works out naturally)

React.addons.batchedUpdates is probably an important part in this for some of the use-cases and it's something I'd really like to see move out of addons, but that's another topic :)

[waldreiter]

@syranide As I understand this, if everything gets rendered from the top, then this.forceRemount() needs to be called from componentWillReceiveProps. That would be not too bad. But I wonder if there are edge cases, since componentWillReceiveProps is only guaranteed to be called if props change?

React.addons.batchedUpdates is still undocumented, so I don't know what it does. (Issue is here: #3570)

[syranide]

@cody Ah, yes I see what you mean now, that's a good point. I'm getting an uneasy feel thinking about all this now... hmm...

[sophiebits]

I don't think we'll do this since providing a new key is easy and we're trying to reduce API surface area, not increase it. Thanks for the idea.