Adding createElement.

high-performance-react.org

@@ -115,7 +115,7 @@ understand how it works so that we can have a complete picture of the
 entire process. The more black-boxes we have in our mental model the
 harder it will be for us to diagnose performance problems.
 
-*** ~JSX~
+** ~JSX~
 
 But before we get to ~createElement~ we should talk about JSX. While
 not strictly a part of React it is almost universally used with
@@ -226,25 +226,75 @@ So now that we've worked through JSX we're ready to tackle
 
 TODO JSX also does validation and escapes input to prevent XXS
 
-*** ~createElement~
+** ~createElement~
 
-A tale of two trees.
+React expects nodes defined as Javascript objects that look like this:
+
+#+BEGIN_SRC javascript
+{
+    type: NODE_TYPE,
+    props: {
+         propA: VALUE,
+         propB: VALUE,
+         ...
+         children: STRING | ARRAY
+    }
+}
+#+END_SRC
+
+That is an object with two properties: ~type~ and ~props~. The ~props~
+property contains all the properties of the node. The node's
+~children~ are also considered part of its properties. The full
+React's ~createElement~ includes more properties but they are unlikely
+to be relevant to your application's performance or our version of
+React here.
+
+#+BEGIN_SRC javascript
+// React's createElement
+const ReactElement = function(type, key, ref, self, source, owner, props)
+#+END_SRC
+
+So all our ~createElement~ needs to do is transform our data structure
+into the objects that our React expects.
 
 #+BEGIN_SRC javascript
 function createElement(node) {
-    if (typeof node === 'string') {
+    // an array: not text, number, or other primitive
+    if (typeof node === 'object') {
+        const [ tag, props, children ] = node;
         return {
-          type: 'TEXT_ELEMENT'
+            type: tag,
+            props: {
+                ...props,
+                children: children.map(createElement)
             }
-    const [ tag, props, children ] = node;
-    const element = document.createDOMElement(tag);
-    for ([key, val] in props) {
-        element[key] = val;
+        };
+    }
+
+    // primitives like text or number
+    return {
+        type: 'TEXT',
+        props: {
+            nodeValue: node,
+            children: []
         }
-    children.forEach(createElement);
+    };
 }
 #+END_SRC
 
+Our ~createElement~ has two main parts: complex elements and primitive
+elements. The first part tests whether ~node~ is a complex node
+(specified by an array) and then generates an ~element~ object based
+on the input node. It recursively calls ~createElement~ to generate an
+array of children elements. If the node is not complex then we
+generate an element of type 'TEXT' which we use for all primitives
+like strings and numbers.
+
+That's it. Now we have everything we need to actually begin the
+process of rendering our tree to the DOM!
+
+*** Reconciliation
+A tale of two trees.
 * Rendering Model
   React calls shouldComponentUpdate to know if it should re-render the
   component. by default it returns true.
@@ -267,6 +317,7 @@ function createElement(node) {
 * Concurrent Rendering
 * UX
 * JS Service Workers
+* Keys
 * Reconciliation
   - diffing algorithm based on heuristics. generic algorithm is O(n^3)
   - "Fiber" algorithm notes