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JavaScript React Basics (2018) Introducing Props Components and Props

Routine Poutine
Routine Poutine
26,050 Points

Why does JSX allow for strings without {}, but not numbers and booleans? "My Scoreboard" is OK, but not {5}.

Hi,

Why is it OK to use a "string" without {}, but not a number {5} or boolean {true}? Why aren't we required to put {"string"}?

3 Answers

Marco Fregoso
Marco Fregoso
405 Points

You can pass in the boolean or number value but since you're passing it directly it'll be parsed in as a string representation of that value. Let's say you passed the number 1 directly without curly braces.

const Container = () => {
  return (
    <div>
      <Component passedValue="1" />
    </div>
  );
}

If you then tried to test what type of value the passed number is it would return a string which could cause annoying bugs if you tried to do something with the value.

const Component = (props) => {
  console.log(typeof props.passedValue); // logs 'string' to the console
  return ....
}

If on the other hand you were to pass the number in a JS expression with the value of 1 between curly braces it would be a number type.:

...
   <Component passedValue={1} />
...
...

const Component = (props) => {
  console.log(typeof props.passedValue); // logs 'number' to the console
  return ....
}
MD MONIRUZZAMAN
MD MONIRUZZAMAN
6,130 Points

This { } Curly braces lets JSX know that it's a javascript expression & need to evaluate. Like isFun={true}. When we use { } in JSX ,it's called a JSX expression

<Header 
  title="My Scoreboard" 
  totalPlayers={5}
  isFun={true}
/>

Great question. My understanding is that as the JSX mimics the name/value attribute system from HTML, you must pass it either a string like you would in HTML <a href="www.google.com"></a> (the href portion of that tag is the attribute) or to delineate a different method, you must use the expression evaluator {}.

As someone mentioned above, passing a number in quotes would evaluate to a string and you would have to do type conversion or check the string value to use it as a number (not very handy or fun).