Lab: LotR

Let's build something small to reinforce what you've learned so far. We're going to practice creating components and passing information into them.

We'll build a simple website that shows title and runtime information about the original Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

Setup

Create a new react app called lord-of-the-rings:

npx create-react-app lord-of-the-rings
cd lord-of-the-rings
npm start

Um, excuse me, you made a typo

Nope! The command npx is a legitimate thing. It's called a package runner. You can read more about it here on npmjs.com. It enables you to run the command create-react-app without globally installing create-react-app.

Note: If you globally installed create-react-app, you don't need the npx portion of the above command.

Create A Simple Movie Component

Open up your ./src directory in your favorite text editor.

Inside of ./src folder, create a new React Component file called Movie.js.

src/Movie.js

import React, { Component } from 'react';

class Movie extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      // we'll add JSX here
    )
  }
}

export default Movie

or, we could write it as a functional component, like so:

import React from 'react'

const Movie = () => {
   return (
     // code goes here!
   )
}

export default Movie

Let's add some JSX to the render function so this component will be visible in our application. Let's keep the JSX simple for now, and we'll make it more complex once we're sure it works.

Remember, our goal is to display the movie title and runtime information.

Let's add one <h1> for the movie title, and a <p> for the runtime. Remember, the JSX of each component in React ultimately must descend from just one parent element. Wrap the <h1> and <p> in a <div>.

The JSX will look like this:

<div>
  <h1>The Lord of the Rings: A Trilogy</h1>
  <p>4h 37min</p>
</div>

Add this JSX to the component so that it's returned from the render() method.

src/Movie.js

import React, { Component } from 'react';

class Movie extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        <h1>The Lord of the Rings: A Trilogy</h1>
        <p>4h 37min</p>
      </div>
    )
  }
}

export default Movie

so what does it look like as a functional component? I'm so glad you asked!

import React from 'react'

const Movie = () => {
   return (
      <div>
         <h1>The Lord of the Rings: A Trilogy</h1>
         <p>4h 37min</p>
      </div>
   )
}

export default Movie

Viewing the Component

Let's make this component appear on the page. One great thing about using create-react-app is it tells us exactly what we need to do to start editing our application. The homepage says, "To get started, edit src/App.js and save to reload." Let's do that!

Open src/App.js.

Add our <Movie /> component just after the paragraph. Go back to the app and see if it appears.

Dealing with Errors

Uh oh. There's an error.

Failed to compile
./src/App.js
  Line 15:  'Movie' is not defined  react/jsx-no-undef

'Movie' is not defined? Ah.

One does not simply refer to components in React. In our src/App.js, we're saying "Display what's returned from the Movie component." However - we haven't told src/Apps.js where to find the Movie component! We must import a component before using it.

Add this import statement with the other imports at the top of the src/App.js file.

import Movie from './Movie';

Now you should see the page without the error message, and it should have the JSX from the Movie component.

The entire App.js should look like this:

src/App.js

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import logo from './logo.svg';
import './App.css';
import Movie from './Movie';

class App extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <div className="App">
        <header className="App-header">
          <img src={logo} className="App-logo" alt="logo" />
          <p>
            Edit <code>src/App.js</code> and save to reload.
          </p>
          <Movie />
        </header>
      </div>
    );
  }
}

export default App;

or, if you're following along building a functional component, it will look like:

import React from 'react';
import logo from './logo.svg';
import './App.css';
import Movie from './Movie';

const App = () => {
    return (
      <div className="App">
        <header className="App-header">
          <img src={logo} className="App-logo" alt="logo" />
          <p>
            Edit <code>src/App.js</code> and save to reload.
          </p>
          <Movie />
        </header>
      </div>
    );
}

export default App;

Passing Information via Properties

We need to make our Movie component accept information so we can use it to display different titles and runtimes. In the src/App.js file, add title, hours, and minutes props to the <Movie> tag. We'll be able to read the value of these props from inside the component. You can name props pretty much anything you want - but it's good practice to be descriptive!

<Movie title="The Fellowship of the Ring" hours="2" minutes="58" />

We'll be able to read the value of these props from inside the component. You can name props pretty much anything you want - but it's good practice to be descriptive!

React gathers all of the props we added to the call to <Movie /> and makes them each available through the this.props object. This means that inside the Movie component, we can now access the values of props through this.props.title, this.props.hours and this.props.minutes. Remember, we use curly braces { } to display the value of something.

In src/Movie.js, change the <h1> to display the value of the title prop by writing {this.props.title}.

Note: in the event that you're using a functional component, you can omit the word "this" from these notes! Just remember to pass props into your function, like so:

const Movie = (props) => {

There was also the hours and minutes props. Update the JSX to access and display the value of each prop we created.

The render() function ends up looking like this:

src/Movie.js

import React, { Component } from 'react';

class Movie extends Component {
    render() {
        return(
            <div>
                <h1>The Lord of the Rings: {this.props.title}</h1>
                <p>{this.props.hours}h {this.props.minutes}min</p>
            </div>
        )
    }
}

export default Movie;

or, as functional:

import React from 'react'

const Movie = (props) => {
  return(
    <div>
      <h1>The Lord of the Rings: {props.title}</h1>
      <p>{props.hours}h {props.minutes}min</p>
    </div>
  )
}

export default Movie

Refresh the page and make sure everything works correctly.

Reusing the Component

Once you've got props working for one component, then write two more!

In src/App.js, call the <Movie /> component again with different values for the title, hours and minutes properties. Display information for the complete trilogy! (If you don't know everything about Lord of the Rings off the top of your head, here it is).

<Movie title="The Fellowship of the Ring" hours="2" minutes="58" />
<Movie title="The Two Towers" hours="2" minutes="59" />
<Movie title="The Return of the King" hours="3" minutes="21" />

Solution

When you're finished, review the reflections below.

Reflecting on Reusability

Components are great because they allow us to compartmentalize code and easily reuse parts we create. We simply set the value of props and the component defines how everything should be displayed.

In this instance, we factored out some redundancy of the movie titles.

  • All these movies start with "Lord of the Rings:", so only the unique part is the prop.

  • Similarly, we don't have to rewrite the format of the runtime information.

Building and reusing components becomes especially powerful the more complex components become.

  • Imagine building a component for video search results inside YouTube.

    • The props list is huge:

      • ton of links

      • time information

      • preview images

      • options to add the result to a playlist

      • and all sorts of other things.

Building one component to rule all them all would save you a lot of time and headaches!

Internet Dive Point

In case you want to nerd out, here are handy links to the IMDB page for each movie:

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