About the removal of componentWillReceiveProps
: you should be able to handle its uses with a combination of getDerivedStateFromProps
and componentDidUpdate
, see the React blog post for example migrations. And yes, the object returned by getDerivedStateFromProps
updates the state similarly to an object passed to setState
.
In case you really need the old value of a prop, you can always cache it in your state with something like this:
state = {
cachedSomeProp: null
// ... rest of initial state
};
static getDerivedStateFromProps(nextProps, prevState) {
// do things with nextProps.someProp and prevState.cachedSomeProp
return {
cachedSomeProp: nextProps.someProp,
// ... other derived state properties
};
}
Anything that doesn't affect the state can be put in componentDidUpdate
, and there's even a getSnapshotBeforeUpdate
for very low-level stuff.
UPDATE: To get a feel for the new (and old) lifecycle methods, the react-lifecycle-visualizer package may be helpful.