javascript - How can I render HTML from another file in a React component?

Question

Is it possible to render HTML from another file in a React component?

I have tried the following, but it does not work:

var React = require('react');

/* Template html */
var template = require('./template');

module.exports = React.createClass({
    render: function() {
        return(
            <template/>
        );
    }
});

Answer 1

If your template.html file is just HTML and not a React component, then you can't require it in the same way you would do with a JS file.

However, if you are using Browserify — there is a transform called stringify which will allow you to require non-js files as strings. Once you have added the transform, you will be able to require HTML files and they will export as though they were just strings.

Once you have required the HTML file, you'll have to inject the HTML string into your component, using the dangerouslySetInnerHTML prop.

var __html = require('./template.html');
var template = { __html: __html };

React.module.exports = React.createClass({
  render: function() {
    return(
      <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={template} />
    );
  }
});

This goes against a lot of what React is about though. It would be more natural to create your templates as React components with JSX, rather than as regular HTML files.

The JSX syntax makes it trivially easy to express structured data, like HTML, especially when you use stateless function components.

If your template.html file looked something like this

<div class='foo'>
  <h1>Hello</h1>
  <p>Some paragraph text</p>
  <button>Click</button>
</div>

Then you could convert it instead to a JSX file that looked like this.

module.exports = function(props) {
  return (
    <div className='foo'>
      <h1>Hello</h1>
      <p>Some paragraph text</p>
      <button>Click</button>
    </div>
  );
};

Then you can require and use it without needing stringify.

var Template = require('./template');

module.exports = React.createClass({
  render: function() {
    var bar = 'baz';
    return(
      <Template foo={bar}/>
    );
  }
});

It maintains all of the structure of the original file, but leverages the flexibility of React's props model and allows for compile time syntax checking, unlike a regular HTML file.