A common pattern in React is for a component to return multiple elements. Fragments let you group a list of children without adding extra nodes to the DOM.

render() {
  return (
    <React.Fragment>
      <ChildA />
      <ChildB />
      <ChildC />
    </React.Fragment>
  );
}

There is also a new short syntax for declaring them.

Motivation

A common pattern is for a component to return a list of children. Take this example React snippet:

class Table extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <table>
        <tr>
          <Columns />
        </tr>
      </table>
    );
  }
}

<Columns /> would need to return multiple <td> elements in order for the rendered HTML to be valid. If a parent div was used inside the render() of <Columns />, then the resulting HTML will be invalid.

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

results in a <Table /> output of:

<table>
  <tr>
    <div>
      <td>Hello</td>
      <td>World</td>
    </div>
  </tr>
</table>

Fragments solve this problem.

Usage

class Columns extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <React.Fragment>        <td>Hello</td>
        <td>World</td>
      </React.Fragment>    );
  }
}

which results in a correct <Table /> output of:

<table>
  <tr>
    <td>Hello</td>
    <td>World</td>
  </tr>
</table>

Short Syntax

There is a new, shorter syntax you can use for declaring fragments. It looks like empty tags:

class Columns extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <>        <td>Hello</td>
        <td>World</td>
      </>    );
  }
}

You can use <></> the same way you’d use any other element except that it doesn’t support keys or attributes.

Keyed Fragments

Fragments declared with the explicit <React.Fragment> syntax may have keys. A use case for this is mapping a collection to an array of fragments — for example, to create a description list:

function Glossary(props) {
  return (
    <dl>
      {props.items.map(item => (
        // Without the `key`, React will fire a key warning
        <React.Fragment key={item.id}>
          <dt>{item.term}</dt>
          <dd>{item.description}</dd>
        </React.Fragment>
      ))}
    </dl>
  );
}

key is the only attribute that can be passed to Fragment. In the future, we may add support for additional attributes, such as event handlers.