Container components

In this final section of the chapter, we're going to cover the concept of container components. This is a common React pattern, and it brings together many of the concepts that you've learned about state and properties.

The basic premise of container components is simple: don't couple data fetching with the component that renders the data. The container is responsible for fetching the data and passing it to its child component. It contains the component responsible for rendering the data.

The idea is that you should be able to achieve some level of substitutability with this pattern. For example, a container could substitute its child component. Or, a child component could be used in a different container. Let's see the container pattern in action, starting with the container itself:

import React, { Component } from 'react'; 
 
import MyList from './MyList'; 
 
// Utility function that's intended to mock 
// a service that this component uses to...