react-guide

>it sometimes seems like a minor change to the UI can require a major change to the source, cascading through multiple components. >in React I'm finding result in needing to change where state is kept (or what things are state and what things are props), requiring cascading changes to many components. It sounds like you don't have a good understanding of state vs props. You should use state as little as possible and try to do as much as possible through props, passing them down from the parent components as necessary. When I create a react app I use the flux architecture, define a state on the top parent component and then add most of the other components as children to this parent component, passing down state as props, and adding listeners to update the components when the state of the parent changes. As far as moving elements around I

This https://github.com/uberVU/react-guide/blob/master/props-vs-s... is a good explanation of the difference. But in short, it essentially comes down to who can manipulate the data. If the component will manipulate it, then it is state. On the other hand, if a difference source is going to be manipulating it, then it should be a prop. In this case, the client side of relay will be changing the data according to instruction from the server (e.g. a new message arrived). Therefore, the state is being passed as a prop.