The initial state of a component isn't actually required, but if your component uses state, it should be set. This is because if the component expects certain state properties to be there and they aren't, then the component will either fail or render something unexpected. Thankfully, it's easy to set the initial component state.
The initial state of a component should always be an object with one or more properties. For example, you might have a component that uses a single array as its state. This is fine, but just make sure that you set the initial array as a property of the state object. Don't use an array as the state. The reason for this is simple: consistency. Every React component uses a plain object as its state.
Let's turn our attention to some code now. Here's a component that sets an initial state object:
import React, { Component } from 'react';
export default class MyComponent extends Component...
