React - Are class components ever used?

Question

I'm going through some courses that were made before react hooks were a thing, now I'm wondering if there is any reason at all to use class-based components over functional components now that hooks exist?

I can't seem to come up with a reason or scenario where a class-based component would be preferable, but maybe I'm just not aware of certain corner-cases where a class-based component would be the go-to choice.

Appreciate any feedback regarding this.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Class components are still used, but there is no particular reason to continue to do so. Tthe Facebook team recommends that all new React code is hook-based functional components, and not class-based. You can mix class components and hook-based components, so there is no reason to rewrite your class components.

You can read more at https://reactjs.org/docs/hooks-faq.html

Answer 2

At the company I work for we have mixture of both since we started using react before hooks. In my experience class components tend to have a lot more state logic, are fatter, tightly coupled, and harder to test. However, even though we're moving towards developing functional components, some people coming from ac# background tend to pick up class based components more easily. I would highly suggest using functional components but depending on the background of your team it might not hurt in the short run to use class based ones.

Answer 3

The only good reason that I can think of for using class components these days would be to create error boundaries as:

Only class components can be error boundaries.

From https://reactjs.org/docs/error-boundaries.html