React Initial State Lab

Overview

In this lab, you'll set initial state in a React component and distinguish between state and props.

Instructions

Follow the steps below and create two components, ImageSlider and Bomb. Currently, Bomb.js and ImageSlider.js don't contain any code, so if you run learn or npm start, you'll get an error. This is because our tests are trying to import and use these components before they've been written.

So, before we continue, your first task is to create a simple components for both ImageSlider and Bomb:

• In the src/ImageSlider.js file, create an ImageSlider React component.
• In the src/Bomb.js file, create a Bomb React component.

These components will need a valid render method to allow for our tests to properly import and use them. Now, if you've created valid components, you should be able to run learn to see the test results and run npm start to start the app.

Image slider

Let's pretend we're making an awesome slider for our new portfolio site. Naturally, we'll use React to do so! We have to start somewhere, so in this lab we'll just focus on setting up the initial state of the slider.

1. Its initial state should have a property called currentSlideIndex that starts at 0.
2. It should only render out the text 'I am on slide <CURRENT_SLIDE>', where <CURRENT_SLIDE> is the value of this.state.currentSlideIndex.

A bomb timer

Take a moment to think about what a bomb does and how it works. Don't get all into the nitty gritty — what we're going to focus on right now is the timer.

Let's create a component that represents a bomb timer that counts down until it reaches 0. However, the only thing we're going to focus on right now is setting the initial state of the bomb: the amount of seconds left on the timer. Since bomb timers can differ, we'll pass in a prop to our Bomb component to determine what the starting count should be.

1. The initial state of Bomb should have a property called secondsLeft.

2. The initial value of secondsLeft should be equal to the initialCount prop of our Bomb component.

   We'll need to learn how to set an intial state based off that component's props. React passes a component's props as an argument into the constructor (i.e., constructor(props)). Remember to call super() on the first line of the constructor (this is required in React components if we are to use this in the constructor). Ultimately, our constructor should look something like this:

   constructor(props) { //props that the component gets from its parent
     super()
     this.state = { //define initial state with a key of 'someKey' set to the 'someValue' prop
       someKey: props.someValue
     }
   }

3. As an extra step for understanding, you can open in the index.js file to see how we are passing the initialCount prop to Bomb

4. It should render the text '<SECONDS_LEFT> seconds left before I go boom!', where <SECONDS_LEFT> is the value of secondsLeft.

5. If secondsLeft equals 0, it should render 'Boom!' instead.

Resources

• Thinking in React