A generic React component proxy useful for hot reloading.

• React 0.14+

Intended to be used from hot reloading tools like React Hot Loader.
If you’re an application developer, it’s unlikely you’ll want to use it directly.

You will need something like react-deep-force-update to re-render the component tree after applying the update.

import React, { Component } from 'react';

class ComponentVersion1 extends Component {
  render() {
    return <div>Before hot update.</div>;
  }
}

class ComponentVersion2 extends Component {
  render() {
    return <div>After hot update.</div>;
  }
}

Without React Proxy:

const rootEl = document.getElementById('root');
React.render(<ComponentVersion1 />, rootEl);

// Will reset state and kill DOM :-(
React.render(<ComponentVersion2 />, rootEl);

With React Proxy:

import React from 'react';
import { render } from 'react-dom';
import createProxy from 'react-proxy';
import deepForceUpdate from 'react-deep-force-update';

// Create a proxy object, given the initial React component class.
const proxy = createProxy(ComponentVersion1);

// Obtain a React class that acts exactly like the initial version.
// This is what we'll use in our app instead of the real component class.
const Proxy = proxy.get();

// Render the component (proxy, really).
const rootInstance = render(<Proxy />, rootEl);

// Point the proxy to the new React component class by calling update().
// Instances will stay mounted and their state will be intact, but their methods will be updated.
proxy.update(ComponentVersion2);

// Force-update the whole React component tree.
// Until React provides an official DevTools API to do this,
// you should keep the reference to the root instance(s).
deepForceUpdate(rootInstance);

This will work with React Native when facebook/react-native#2985 lands.
For now, you can keep using 1.x.

• Supports both classic (React.createClass()) and modern (ES6 classes) style
• Supports inherited and base classes (although you shouldn’t use inheritance with React)
• Supports classic createClass() autobinding and modern autobind-decorator
• Contains an extensive test suite to avoid regressions
• Preserves displayName
• Preserves enumerability and writability of methods
• Preserves toString() of methods
• Replaces instance getters and setters
• Replaces instance methods preserving their identity
• Replaces bound instance methods preserving their identity
• Because identity is preserved, instance methods already scheduled for setInterval or setTimeout are updated
• Replaces static getters and setters
• Replaces unbound static methods
• Replaces static properties unless they were overwritten by code

• Does not replace ES7 instance properties
• Does not replace bound static methods
• Replacing a method using autobind-decorator causes its identity to change

1. Clone the repository
2. Run npm install
3. Run npm run test:watch
4. Take a look at the existing tests
5. Add tests for the failing case you aim to fix and make them pass
6. Submit a PR!

MIT