Web Components vs. React: A Comprehensive Comparison

What are Components?

Web components allow developers to create reusable, strongly encapsulated custom HTML elements in web pages. These elements can be used in any HTML document or frontend library, making them a versatile choice for developers. On the other hand, React components are special JavaScript objects that construct the virtual DOM tree. While both technologies enable reusable UI elements, web components can be used across various libraries and frameworks, whereas React components are limited to the React application.

Web Component Technologies

The web components specification offers three built-in technologies to create reusable custom HTML elements:

• Custom Elements: Allow developers to create new customized HTML tags using the browser’s JavaScript API customElements.define() method.
• Shadow DOM: Enables the creation of isolated custom elements that don’t clash with other parts of the webpage.
• HTML Templates: Allow developers to declare markup structures at load time using the <template> tag.

Understanding React Components

React components are not instances of HTMLElement like web components. Instead, they are special JavaScript objects for the React library to construct the virtual DOM tree. There are two syntactical approaches for creating React components:

• Class Components: A JavaScript class that extends the React.Component class, managing state and lifecycle methods.
• Functional Components: A JavaScript function that returns JSX code, with support for state management using React Hooks.

class MyComponent extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return <div>Hello World!</div>;
  }
}

function MyComponent() {
  return <div>Hello World!</div>;
}

Styling and UI Kits

When building components, UI is a crucial aspect. Both web components and React offer various styling options and UI kits to simplify the development process.

Web Components:

• Allow isolated style sheets for each custom element via the shadow DOM concept.
• Libraries like Lit and Material Web Components offer easy styling definitions.

React:

• Offers a large ecosystem with various UI libraries and frameworks, such as Material-UI, React Bootstrap, and Semantic UI React.
• Provides pre-developed components and theming support.

Improving Accessibility

Accessibility is a critical aspect of web development. Both web components and React enable accessible websites, with React allowing standard HTML techniques and web components inheriting accessibility features from native HTML elements.

Pros and Cons of Using React and Web Components

Each technology has its advantages and disadvantages.

React

Web Components

Will Web Components Replace React?

While web components and React share some similarities, they serve different purposes and have distinct goals. Web components aim to offer a native browser feature for creating reusable custom HTML elements, whereas React focuses on providing a productive, declarative development methodology for creating component-based UIs. As such, web components won’t replace React, but the growth of web component-based libraries may affect React’s popularity.

Learn more about web components and React