What is component composition?

Learn about component composition and its benefits in shadcn/ui

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This model will talk about component composition. What do we mean when we say component composition? The dictionary.com definition says that composition is the act of combining parts or elements to form a whole. In the context of react, component composition refers to the practice of building new components by combining existing ones. A components in its simplest form is a function that takes an input and returns a react element or a JS6 element. A component is also a reusable piece of code that represents a part of the user interface. Composing component means you are combining these components to create a new, more complex component. You do this already when you build UI, and we have already done it in the course. For example, the login button you have built is a composition of a button, a dialog, and the authentication form component. The date picker element from ShadCy and UI we saw on the previous model is a composition of a popover, button, and calendar components. But why is composition ascension? Because it enables us to create complex interfaces through simpler, easier to understand, modular building blocks. The best analogy of composition is legos. You can build a spaceship, a castle, or a car using pretty much the same blocks , just in different combinations. That's the path composition. React allows you to compose components using props, children, and hooks. In the next lesson we'll explore these concepts, but here is a straightforward, very simple composition example. In the example, the container component comprises the children prop, and it encapsulates any children passed to it in a div with a padding of four or horizontally. It's enabled you to reuse it in different parts of the application. It traps the P element in the app. This example is simple, but it illustrates the concept of composition. Building new components by combining existing ones. Composing components in React and web development in general offers a lot of benefits, making it like a fundamental skill for building applications. Here are the key advantages, so reusability. Composing components allow you easily reuse them across the application. In simplicity, it makes the code easier to understand and maintain by breaking down complex interfaces into smaller or more manageable pieces. Flexibility. Components can be easily customized and extended by being composed differently. Enable the UI to adapt to various use cases or requirements. Testability. Composing components make it easier to test them, as each piece can be tested in isolation, making it a day-defying and fixing issues much easier. Maintenability. It simplifies the maintenance and allowing changes to individual parts without affecting the rest of the application and consistency. It helps maintain a consistent look and feel across the application by reusing components to ensure UI consistency. The key to good component composition is providing the component user, the developer, with as much flexibility as possible. By not making hard to change decisions about the component design functionality , you allow the component to be reused in different contexts, periable needs. Here are the best practices to keep in mind when composing components. The first is keeping components small, breaking down complex components into smaller, reusable ones to promote the reusability and maintainability. The second is separation of concerns, following the principle from software engineering, and ensuring that each component has a single responsibility and is focused on a specific UI aspect. In that encapsulating the logic, encapsulating the logic within a component to promote the reusability and maintainability and avoiding duplication. By keeping a component small, focused on single responsibility and encaps ulating the logic you can ensure they are reusable and maintainable. In the next lesson, you will compose a new filter component based on some already existing shots in UI components. Let's see it. This is the filter component. Based on the chosen location or date.