babel-plugin-transform-react-create-element

Shorten JSX React.createElement calls using a local variable.

Compiles

import React from 'react';
 
const Component = () => (
  <div>Hello, World!</div>
);

to

import React from 'react';
 
const _createElement = React.createElement;
 
const Component = () => (
  _createElement('div', {}, 'Hello, World!')
);

instead of

import React from 'react';
 
const Component = () => (
  React.createElement('div', {}, 'Hello, World!')
);

How?

Install via npm install -D babel-plugin-transform-react-create-element or yarn add -D babel-plugin-transform-react-create-element.

In your .babelrc:

{
  "plugins": [
    "babel-plugin-transform-react-create-element",
  ]
}

It works by translating any found calls to React.createElement to use the newly inserted local variable instead.

As such, it automatically respects any existing JSX pragmas in the file and does not interfer with their use.

Why?

Performance. In particular in conjunction with the way webpack transforms imports.

Also created to solve https://github.com/facebook/create-react-app/issues/5435.

License

MIT

Loosely based on https://github.com/facebook/create-react-app/pull/6219.