babel-plugin-transform-react-jsx

What is babel-plugin-transform-react-jsx?

The babel-plugin-transform-react-jsx package is a Babel plugin that transforms JSX syntax into JavaScript. This allows developers to write HTML-like syntax in their JavaScript code, which is then converted to React.createElement calls.

What are babel-plugin-transform-react-jsx's main functionalities?

Transform JSX to React.createElement

This feature allows you to write JSX syntax, which is more readable and expressive, and have it automatically transformed into React.createElement calls, which is what React uses under the hood.

const element = <h1>Hello, world!</h1>;
// Transforms to:
const element = React.createElement('h1', null, 'Hello, world!');

Custom JSX Pragma

This feature allows you to specify a custom function to be used instead of React.createElement. This can be useful if you are using a different library that uses JSX syntax.

/* @jsx customCreateElement */
const element = <h1>Hello, world!</h1>;
// Transforms to:
const element = customCreateElement('h1', null, 'Hello, world!');

Automatic Fragment Support

This feature allows you to use the shorthand syntax for React fragments, which are used to group multiple elements without adding extra nodes to the DOM.

const element = <><h1>Hello, world!</h1><p>This is a paragraph.</p></>;
// Transforms to:
const element = React.createElement(React.Fragment, null, React.createElement('h1', null, 'Hello, world!'), React.createElement('p', null, 'This is a paragraph.'));

Other packages similar to babel-plugin-transform-react-jsx

babel-plugin-jsx

babel-plugin-jsx is a Babel plugin that also transforms JSX syntax into JavaScript. It is similar to babel-plugin-transform-react-jsx but offers more flexibility in terms of customization and supports multiple JSX libraries.

babel-plugin-inferno

babel-plugin-inferno is a Babel plugin specifically designed for the Inferno library, which is a fast, React-like library for building user interfaces. It transforms JSX syntax into Inferno.createElement calls.

README

babel-plugin-transform-react-jsx

Turn JSX into React function calls

Example

React

In

var profile = <div>
  <img src="avatar.png" className="profile" />
  <h3>{[user.firstName, user.lastName].join(' ')}</h3>
</div>;

Out

var profile = React.createElement("div", null,
  React.createElement("img", { src: "avatar.png", className: "profile" }),
  React.createElement("h3", null, [user.firstName, user.lastName].join(" "))
);

Custom

In

/** @jsx dom */

var { dom } = require("deku");

var profile = <div>
  <img src="avatar.png" className="profile" />
  <h3>{[user.firstName, user.lastName].join(' ')}</h3>
</div>;

Out

/** @jsx dom */

var dom = require("deku").dom;

var profile = dom( "div", null,
  dom("img", { src: "avatar.png", className: "profile" }),
  dom("h3", null, [user.firstName, user.lastName].join(" "))
);

Installation

npm install --save-dev babel-plugin-transform-react-jsx

Usage

Via .babelrc (Recommended)

.babelrc

Without options:

{
  "plugins": ["transform-react-jsx"]
}

With options:

{
  "plugins": [
    ["transform-react-jsx", {
      "pragma": "dom" // default pragma is React.createElement
    }]
  ]
}

Via CLI

babel --plugins transform-react-jsx script.js

Via Node API

require("babel-core").transform("code", {
  plugins: ["transform-react-jsx"]
});

Options

pragma

string, defaults to React.createElement.

Replace the function used when compiling JSX expressions.

Note that the @jsx React.DOM pragma has been deprecated as of React v0.12

useBuiltIns

boolean, defaults to false.

When spreading props, use Object.assign directly instead of Babel's extend helper.