Where to make an initial AJAX request from ReactJS

Question

I have a page where I need to load some Ajax source data.
I read on this Reactjs page that I have to make a call in componentDidMount .

What is the benefit of requesting a request for componentDidMount rather than componentWillMount ?

Answer 1

Since the reaction is intended to be used as a representation, your ajax requests should be placed in your model.

Otherwise, if for some reason you need to do this in the view, the difference between componentDidMount and componentWillMount is that the first one is called once , the element is re-displayed and you have access to it through this.getDOMNode() , and the second - once before the start of render() .

Answer 2

When using server rendering, componentWillMount is called, but componentDidMount not. Because of this, I try to do any initialization that requires a browser (including Ajax and DOM manipulations) in componentDidMount .

Answer 3

In componentDidMount() , you have access to the DOM if you need it; in componentWillMount() you still do not have access (although you may not need it if all you want to do is call setState ).

Make sure that in your render() method you can gracefully display an “empty” state (that is, before returning the Ajax results). getInitialState() can be useful here for setting the state of the base database.