ReactJS - render conditionally whitespace

Question

I'm trying to build a button-component which is able to have icons set before and after the element's children.

Therefore, the props are like this:

export interface IButtonProps {
    children?: React.ReactNode;
    leftIcon?: FontAwesomeIcon;
    rightIcon?: FontAwesomeIcon;
}

whereas FontAwesomeIcon is an enum holding the available icons.

In the button's render -function I do check if there is an icon set. If so, there should be the icon and a whitespace between the children and the icon.

render(): JSX.Element {
    let { children, leftIcon, rightIcon } = this.props;

    return (
        <button>
            {leftIcon && <FontAwesome icon={leftIcon} />}
            {leftIcon && " "}
            {children}
            {rightIcon && " "}
            {rightIcon && <FontAwesome icon={rightIcon} />}
        </button>
    );
}

Though this solution is working I wonder if there is an easier way than having to check twice for an icon to be set. Also I would like to have the ability to use   instead of . Is there any way to escape the whitespace so I can write something like {leftIcon && <FontAwesome icon={leftIcon} />&nbsp;} ?

I tried {leftIcon && <FontAwesome icon={leftIcon} />{"&nsbp;"}} or {leftIcon && <FontAwesome icon={leftIcon} />{&nsbp;}} which leads to

TS1005: '}' expected.

Answer 1

This article suggests that   should work for intentional whitespace http://andrewhfarmer.com/how-whitespace-works-in-jsx/

Seeing as you should be able to insert   inline with other HTML I would have thought you don't need to wrap it up in brackets or a string. Imagine it just like writing <br /> and you should be able to glue it to the end of the <FontAwesome /> component.

render(): JSX.Element {
  let { children, leftIcon, rightIcon } = this.props;

  return (
    <button>
        {leftIcon && <FontAwesome icon={leftIcon} />&nbsp;}
        {children}
        {rightIcon && &nbsp;<FontAwesome icon={rightIcon} />}
    </button>
  );
}

Disclaimer, this is untested

As an alternative, this github issue https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/1643 suggests you can add {' '} for intentional whitespace, so I'd have thought this would work too:

render(): JSX.Element {
  let { children, leftIcon, rightIcon } = this.props;

  return (
    <button>
        {leftIcon && <FontAwesome icon={leftIcon} />{' '}}
        {children}
        {rightIcon && {' '}<FontAwesome icon={rightIcon} />}
    </button>
  );
}

Disclaimer, also untested