React v0.9 RC

By Sophie Alpert·

We’re almost ready to release React v0.9! We’re posting a release candidate so that you can test your apps on it; we’d much prefer to find show-stopping bugs now rather than after we release.

The release candidate is available for download from the CDN:

We’ve also published version 0.9.0-rc1 of the react and react-tools packages on npm and the react package on bower.

Please try these builds out and file an issue on GitHub if you see anything awry.

Upgrade Notes

In addition to the changes to React core listed below, we’ve made a small change to the way JSX interprets whitespace to make things more consistent. With this release, space between two components on the same line will be preserved, while a newline separating a text node from a tag will be eliminated in the output. Consider the code:

<div>
  Monkeys: {listOfMonkeys} {submitButton}
</div>

In v0.8 and below, it was transformed to the following:

React.DOM.div(null, ' Monkeys: ', listOfMonkeys, submitButton);

In v0.9, it will be transformed to this JS instead:

React.DOM.div(null, 'Monkeys:', listOfMonkeys, ' ', submitButton);

We believe this new behavior is more helpful and eliminates cases where unwanted whitespace was previously added.

In cases where you want to preserve the space adjacent to a newline, you can write a JS string like {"Monkeys: "} in your JSX source. We’ve included a script to do an automated codemod of your JSX source tree that preserves the old whitespace behavior by adding and removing spaces appropriately. You can install jsx_whitespace_transformer from npm and run it over your source tree to modify files in place. The transformed JSX files will preserve your code’s existing whitespace behavior.

Changelog

React Core

Breaking Changes

  • The lifecycle methods componentDidMount and componentDidUpdate no longer receive the root node as a parameter; use this.getDOMNode() instead
  • Whenever a prop is equal to undefined, the default value returned by getDefaultProps will now be used instead
  • React.unmountAndReleaseReactRootNode was previously deprecated and has now been removed
  • React.renderComponentToString is now synchronous and returns the generated HTML string
  • Full-page rendering (that is, rendering the <html> tag using React) is now supported only when starting with server-rendered markup
  • On mouse wheel events, deltaY is no longer negated
  • When prop types validation fails, a warning is logged instead of an error thrown (with the production build of React, the type checks are now skipped for performance)
  • On input, select, and textarea elements, .getValue() is no longer supported; use .getDOMNode().value instead
  • this.context on components is now reserved for internal use by React

New Features

  • React now never rethrows errors, so stack traces are more accurate and Chrome’s purple break-on-error stop sign now works properly
  • Added a new tool for profiling React components and identifying places where defining shouldComponentUpdate can give performance improvements
  • Added support for SVG tags defs, linearGradient, polygon, radialGradient, stop
  • Added support for more attributes:
    • noValidate and formNoValidate for forms
    • property for Open Graph <meta> tags
    • sandbox, seamless, and srcDoc for <iframe> tags
    • scope for screen readers
    • span for <colgroup> tags
  • Added support for defining propTypes in mixins
  • Added any, arrayOf, component, oneOfType, renderable, shape to React.PropTypes
  • Added support for statics on component spec for static component methods
  • On all events, .currentTarget is now properly set
  • On keyboard events, .key is now polyfilled in all browsers for special (non-printable) keys
  • On clipboard events, .clipboardData is now polyfilled in IE
  • On drag events, .dataTransfer is now present
  • Added support for onMouseOver and onMouseOut in addition to the existing onMouseEnter and onMouseLeave events
  • Added support for onLoad and onError on <img> elements
  • Added support for onReset on <form> elements
  • The autoFocus attribute is now polyfilled consistently on input, select, and textarea

Bug Fixes

  • React no longer adds an __owner__ property to each component’s props object; passed-in props are now never mutated
  • When nesting top-level components (e.g., calling React.renderComponent within componentDidMount), events now properly bubble to the parent component
  • Fixed a case where nesting top-level components would throw an error when updating
  • Passing an invalid or misspelled propTypes type now throws an error
  • On mouse enter/leave events, .target, .relatedTarget, and .type are now set properly
  • On composition events, .data is now properly normalized in IE9 and IE10
  • CSS property values no longer have px appended for the unitless properties columnCount, flex, flexGrow, flexShrink, lineClamp, order, widows
  • Fixed a memory leak when unmounting children with a componentWillUnmount handler
  • Fixed a memory leak when renderComponentToString would store event handlers
  • Fixed an error that could be thrown when removing form elements during a click handler
  • key values containing . are now supported
  • Shortened data-reactid values for performance
  • Components now always remount when the key property changes
  • Event handlers are attached to document only when necessary, improving performance in some cases
  • Events no longer use .returnValue in modern browsers, eliminating a warning in Chrome
  • scrollLeft and scrollTop are no longer accessed on document.body, eliminating a warning in Chrome
  • General performance fixes, memory optimizations, improvements to warnings and error messages

React with Addons

  • React.addons.TransitionGroup was renamed to React.addons.CSSTransitionGroup
  • React.addons.TransitionGroup was added as a more general animation wrapper
  • React.addons.cloneWithProps was added for cloning components and modifying their props
  • Bug fix for adding back nodes during an exit transition for CSSTransitionGroup
  • Bug fix for changing transitionLeave in CSSTransitionGroup
  • Performance optimizations for CSSTransitionGroup
  • On checkbox <input> elements, checkedLink is now supported for two-way binding

JSX Compiler and react-tools Package

  • Whitespace normalization has changed; now space between two tags on the same line will be preserved, while newlines between two tags will be removed
  • The react-tools npm package no longer includes the React core libraries; use the react package instead.
  • displayName is now added in more cases, improving error messages and names in the React Dev Tools
  • Fixed an issue where an invalid token error was thrown after a JSX closing tag
  • JSXTransformer now uses source maps automatically in modern browsers
  • JSXTransformer error messages now include the filename and problematic line contents when a file fails to parse