Lets load a react component and it’s dependencies. Make sure you’re using Webpack 2.0+ or none of this will work.

First we will create a component called LoadComponent that will be responsible for… loading the component.

import React from 'react' class LoadComponent extends React . Component { state = { component : null , error : null } componentWillMount () { System . import ( `./components/ ${ this . props . component } ` ) . then ( Component => { this . setState ({ component : Component . default }) }) . catch ( error => { this . setState ({ error }) }) } render () { const { component , error } = this . state return this . props . render ( component , error ) } } export default LoadComponent

Two interesting things are happening:

1) We’re using System.import which tells Webpack to create a separate bundle for the component we’re importing and it’s dependencies. At this point we have our primary code bundle and a separate bundle for the imported module and it’s dependencies (code splitting). If you clicked on the link you probably noticed System.import got updated to simply import but I’m going to use the old syntax because my Babel config doesn’t seem to like the new syntax to my knowledge the old syntax is still supported and works the exact same way.

2) In the render method we’re returning a function called render and passing in LoadComponent ’s state as arguments. This pattern is called render props and has proven to be pretty useful in loads of day to day situations. Also gives the component a really nice declarative API so lets check that out:

import React from 'react' import LoadComponent from './LoadComponent' class App extends React . Component { state = { showChart : false } showChart = () => { this . setState ({ showChart : ! this . state . showChart }) } render () { return ( < div > < button onClick = { this . showChart } > load chart < /button > { this . state . showChart ? ( < LoadComponent component = 'Chart.js' render = {( Chart , error ) => ( error ? ( < p > Reload or something ... < /p > ) : ( Chart ? < Chart /> : < p > Loading ... < /p > ) )} / > ) : null } < /div > ) } }

Great, now we have a nice reusable declarative component loader.

So LoadComponent takes two props:

1) component - name of the component it’s responsible for rendering