Components and HTML DOM

Do the parent and child components directly map to the HTML DOM tree structure?

Yes, in most cases, the structure of React components in your application will correspond to the structure of the DOM tree when the app is rendered in a web browser. A parent component in React will typically correspond to an HTML element that contains child elements, and those child elements are represented by child components in React.

Consider the following React component hierarchy:

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const ParentComponent = () => {
  return (
    <div> {/* This div corresponds to the ParentComponent */}
      <ChildComponent />
    </div>
  );
}

const ChildComponent = () => {
  return <p>This is a child component!</p>;
}

In this case, ParentComponent corresponds to the div element, and ChildComponent corresponds to the p element in the DOM.

However, it’s worth noting that React components don’t always correspond 1:1 with HTML elements. A single React component might return multiple HTML elements, or it might return other React components. The exact structure will depend on how you’ve written your components. It’s also important to remember that React uses a virtual DOM, which is a JavaScript representation of the actual DOM, to decide what updates need to be made in the real DOM.