class vs className consumption

[thomasmattheussen]

After reading #103

I would think that this would work:

const componentA = () => {
    return (
        <ComponentB class="yyy">
            Hello World
        </ComponentB>
    )
}

const componentB = () => {
    const { children, className, ...other } = this.props;

    return (
        <div class={ className } { ...other }>
            { children }
        </div>
    )
};

// Expected output: <div class="yyy">Hello World</div>
// Real output: <div>Hello World</div>

In componentB, className is undefined when componentA passes class as the prop (the preact recommendation), whereas in componentB this.props.class does equal "yyy"

In my understanding, in componentB, I should be able to use this.props.className as well as this.props.class regardless of how the prop is passed in componentA. Am I under the wrong assumption?

[lukeed]

Finally, I should mention that Preact will happily consume className props/attributes if you use them. The JSX reviver simply changes the name to class and continues on as it would have if you'd used class.

You can use class or className, whichever you want. But Preact doesn't convert className to class as a property. It accepts both/either for the rendering DOM attribute on plain VDOM elements. See tests.

The props will look exactly as you define them, so it's best to pick one and stay consistent 😄

[thomasmattheussen]

So if I wanted to make a component that's consumable by both React and Preact, it would be best to check for both properties?

[andybons]

class is only supported in React if you’re using Web Components[1], so if you want maximum interop, I would go with className.

[1] https://reactjs.org/docs/dom-elements.html#classname

[thomasmattheussen]

Sure, but devs that use Preact get the recommendation to use class instead of classname. It would be unintuitive/inconsistent for them to use classname for this specific component, as opposed to the rest of their app.

So I'm wondering if I should use some pattern like this:

import { h } from 'preact';
import cx from 'classnames';

const ComponentA = ({ class: c1, className: c2, ...other }) => {
    return (
        <div class={ cx('component-a', c1, c2) } { ...other } />
    );
};

export default ComponentA;

[developit]

This is one of the things preact-compat does that we might want to put into a preact-compat-lite package.

Here's a tiny plugin for Preact that makes className a strict alias of class bidirectionally using a getter/setter pair. Should solve your problem nicely:

import { options } from 'preact';

const classNameDescriptor = {
	enumerable: true,
	configurable: true,
	get() { return this.class; },
	set(value) { this.class = value; }
};

let old = options.vnode;
options.vnode = vnode => {
	let a = vnode.attributes;
	if (a && a.class) {
		Object.defineProperty(a, 'className', classNameDescriptor);
	}
	if (old) old(vnode);
};

[boda-sh]

I'm running into a classnames issue with sass modules in Preact:

// Card component
import { h, Component } from "preact";
import cx from "classnames";
import style from "./style";

export const Card = () => {
  return (
    <div class={style.card}>
      <div class={cx(style.image, "image-item")} />
      <div class={style.body} />
    </div>
  );
};

// in style.scss
.card {
  .image-item {
    margin-bottom: 23px;
  }
}

The specified margin-bottom css does not get applied, any ideas?

[developit]

@BODAZ you need to reference it as style['image-item']:

// Card component
import { h, Component } from "preact";
import cx from "classnames";
import style from "./style";

export const Card = () => {
  return (
    <div class={style.card}>
      <div class={cx(style.image, style['image-item'])} />
      <div class={style.body} />
    </div>
  );
};

// in style.scss
.card {
  .image-item {
    margin-bottom: 23px;
  }
}

Better to post these types of unrelated questions on Slack or StackOverflow btw.

[marvinhagemeister]

@developit Agree, I think this belongs into preact-compat, not into core. The issue should be moved there.

[mitranim]

Just destructure-rename it:

function InnerView({class: className}) {/* ... */}