Composition

Material-UI tries to make composition as easy as possible.

Wrapping components

In order to provide the maximum flexibility and performance, we need a way to know the nature of the child elements a component receives. To solve this problem we tag some of our components when needed with a muiName static property.

However, users like to wrap components in order to enhance them. That can conflict with our muiName solution. If you encounter this issue, you need to:

1. Forward the properties.
2. Use the same tag for your wrapping component that is used with the wrapped component.

Let's see an example:

const WrappedIcon = props => <Icon {...props} />;
WrappedIcon.muiName = 'Icon';

Component property

Material-UI allows you to change the root node that will be rendered via a property called component. The component will render like this:

return React.createElement(this.props.component, props)

For example, by default a List will render a <ul> element. This can be changed by passing a React component to the component property. The following example will render the List component with a <nav> element as root node instead:

<List component="nav">
  <ListItem>
    <ListItemText primary="Trash" />
  </ListItem>
  <ListItem>
    <ListItemText primary="Spam" />
  </ListItem>
</List>

This pattern is very powerful and allows for great flexibility, as well as a way to interoperate with other libraries, such as react-router or your favorite forms library. But it also comes with a small caveat!

Caveat with inlining

Using an inline function as an argument for the component property may result in unexpected unmounting, since you pass a new component to the component property every time React renders. For instance, if you want to create a custom ListItem that acts as a link, you could do the following:

const ListItemLink = ({ icon, primary, secondary, to }) => (
  <li>
    <ListItem button component={props => <Link to={to} {...props} />}>
      {icon && <ListItemIcon>{icon}</ListItemIcon>}
      <ListItemText inset primary={primary} secondary={secondary} />
    </ListItem>
  </li>
);

However, since we are using an inline function to change the rendered component, React will unmount the link every time ListItemLink is rendered. Not only will React update the DOM unnecessarily, the ripple effect of the ListItem will also not work correctly.

The solution is simple: avoid inline functions and pass a static component to the component property instead. Let's change our ListItemLink to the following:

class ListItemLink extends React.Component {
  renderLink = itemProps => <Link to={this.props.to} {...itemProps} />;

  render() {
    const { icon, primary, secondary, to } = this.props;
    return (
      <li>
        <ListItem button component={this.renderLink}>
          {icon && <ListItemIcon>{icon}</ListItemIcon>}
          <ListItemText inset primary={primary} secondary={secondary} />
        </ListItem>
      </li>
    );
  }
}

renderLink will now always reference the same component.

React Router

Here is a demo with React Router: