React Props Validation

Props are an important mechanism for passing the read-only attributes to React components. The props are usually required to use correctly in the component. If it is not used correctly, the components may not behave as expected. Hence, it is required to use props validation in improving react components.

Props validation is a tool that will help the developers to avoid future bugs and problems. It is a useful way to force the correct usage of your components. It makes your code more readable. React components used special property PropTypes that help you to catch bugs by validating data types of values passed through props, although it is not necessary to define components with propTypes. However, if you use propTypes with your components, it helps you to avoid unexpected bugs.

Validating Props

In this example, we are creating App component with all the props that we need. App.propTypes is used for props validation. If some of the props aren’t using the correct type that we assigned, we will get a console warning. After we specify validation patterns, we will set App.defaultProps.

ReactJS Props Validator

Example

Here, we are creating an App component which contains all the props that we need. In this example, App.propTypes is used for props validation. For props validation, you must have to add this line: import PropTypes from ‘prop-types’ in App.js file.

App.js

import React from 'react';
import PropTypes from 'prop-types'; 
class App extends React.Component {
   render() {
      return (
         <div>
            <h3>Array: {this.props.propArray}</h3>
            <h3>Bool: {this.props.propBool ? "True..." : "False..."}</h3>
            <h3>Func: {this.props.propFunc(3)}</h3>
            <h3>Number: {this.props.propNumber}</h3>
            <h3>String: {this.props.propString}</h3>
            <h3>Object: {this.props.propObject.objectName1}</h3>
            <h3>Object: {this.props.propObject.objectName2}</h3>
            <h3>Object: {this.props.propObject.objectName3}</h3>
         </div>
      );
   }
}

App.propTypes = {
   propArray: PropTypes.array.isRequired,
   propBool: PropTypes.bool.isRequired,
   propFunc: PropTypes.func,
   propNumber: PropTypes.number,
   propString: PropTypes.string,
   propObject: PropTypes.object
}

App.defaultProps = {
   propArray: [1,2,3,4,5],
   propBool: true,
   propFunc: function(e){return e},
   propNumber: 1,
   propString: "String value...",
   
   propObject: {
      objectName1:"objectValue1",
      objectName2: "objectValue2",
      objectName3: "objectValue3"
   }
}
export default App;

ReactJS Custom Validators

ReactJS allows creating a custom validation function to perform custom validation. The following argument is used to create a custom validation function.

• props: It should be the first argument in the component.
• propName: It is the propName that is going to validate.
• componentName: It is the componentName that are going to validated again.

var Component = React.createClass({  
App.propTypes = {  
   customProp: function(props, propName, componentName) {  
        if (!item.isValid(props[propName])) {  
          return new Error('Validation failed!');  
        }  
      }  
   }  
})