babel-plugin-react-auto-binding

Babel plugin for React component to take event handler to bind context automatically.

Installation

$ npm install babel-plugin-react-auto-binding --save-dev

Motivation

When you are building a React component, you have to be careful about event handler. In component, class methods are not bound by default. If you forget to bind this.handleClick and pass it to onClick, this will be undefined when the function is actually called.

Therefore, you have to bind the event handler in constructor method, like this,

class App extends React.Component{
  constructor(props) {
    super(props)
    this.state = {
      view: false
    }
    this.handleClick = this.handleClick.bind(this) // binding method
  }
  handleClick(e) {
    this.setSate({
      view: true
    })
  }
  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        <button onClick={this.handleClick}>Click me</button>
        <br />
        {
            (view) && <div>React auto binding succeeded</div>
        }
      </div>
    )
  }
}
 

It's so troublesome. So, this plugin is born to resolve these thorny problems. With this plugin, you can easily code without caring about context.

Instead,

class App extends React.Component{
  constructor(props) {
    super(props)
    this.state = {
      view: false
    }
    // needn't binding method
  }
  
  handleClick(e) {
    this.setSate({
      view: 'value'
    })
  }
  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        <button onClick={this.handleClick}>Click me</button>
        <br />
        {
            (view) && <div>React auto binding succeeded</div>
        }
      </div>
    )
  }
}

Usage

Write via babelrc.

// .babelrc
{
  "plugins": [
    "react-auto-binding"
  ]
}
 

Warning

This plugin check the spuerClass after the extends in classDeclaration to know whether it is React component or not.

Only supported React.Component, React.PureComponent, Component, PureComponent

Do not use other words instead of it, like this,

import {Component as ReactComponent} from "react"
 
class App extends ReactComponent{
  //...
}