State or this.state?

The original title of this blog post was "What does constructor actually do?" But as I struggled to get my thoughts down to 1 min or less, my dismal attempt at creating a poems app helped to crystalize the question I wanted to address.

If it's a question of what the constructor does, the answer is :

• to initialize your component

But why someone might use constructor versus initializing state ={} is less clear. Though I've researched the topic, I'm still grasping at the nuanced differences for when is the best time to choose one over the other

I personally like using class components without props because:

• it's simpler/shorter code
• it inherits methods from React.Component
• Also inherits constructor, which you won't have to write (though you can still choose to)

Creating Component without props

class MyComponent extends Component {
state = {

}
...

Surprisingly, many online resources use functional components or use class with props. This means you have to:

• write more lines of code
• create a constructor with props
• then pass the props value from constructor to super
• call super(props) in order to can use this.props

Creating Component with props

class MyComponent extends React.Component {
    constructor() {
        super();
        this.state={

        }
     }
...

Clearly, I need to read more on this topic. But since it's something I am having to spend more time on, it seemed like it might be helpful to share what I've learned.

As always, here's a StackOverflow link I came across in my Googling