Use context instead of injecting props to Document's children

[Treora]

Currently the <Document> component clones all its children and adds some props so that each <Page> can read these props. The approach has a few downsides however:

• Adding children other than <Page>s gives trouble. For example, you may want a tree of the shape <Document><Button>Next page</Button><Page /></Document>. The button will also get all the extra props injected, which might break it or cause it to complain. The apparent solution of pulling the <Button> out of the <Document> may not be desirable, as e.g. the button would also be rendered when the document is still loading.
• One cannot wrap a <Page> inside another element (unless that passes down all props). E.g. <Document><div><Page /></div></Document> would fail.

To overcome these issues, would it perhaps be a good idea to stop injecting props, and instead use React's Context to couple the Document and Page components?

[wojtekmaj]

That is a freaking awesome idea! I have a hard time believing I did not think of that up until now. I'll start experimenting right away!

[wojtekmaj]

If you want to have a look, go to feature/use-context branch. But to implement such a big change, I need to write tons of test beforehand. I plan to do that, but I have issues with binary files in Jest testing environment - I'll keep you updated for sure.

[nnnikolay]

@wojtekmaj I understand benefits from @Treora but what about official documentation which says

If you want your application to be stable, don’t use context. It is an experimental API and it is likely to break in future releases of React.
....
It is far more likely that Redux is the right solution to your problem than that context is the right solution

[wojtekmaj]

Hmmm... I am aware of this, but I think that may be just the thing that would solve our problems. Anyway, I'm not planning to even release an alpha context-based until I have VERY good set of tests. I'm not nearly done with writing unit tests so far.

Once I have an excellent test suite I may consider using context. So far, I only think it's a neat idea and I know that Proof of Concept works as expected.

[wojtekmaj]

Coming back with a small update:

https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/948992659930124293