A common pattern is for a component to return a list of children. In the below example when Column component is rendering the HTML will be invalid as a div is coming in the middle of the table. Whenever we are using Fragments, we can avoid that.

Take this example React snippet:

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

would need to return multiple elements in order for the rendered HTML to be valid. If a parent div was used inside the render() of , 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 output of:

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

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>
  );
}

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>
  );
}

Short Syntax

Here is the 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>
      </>
    );
  }
}

Motivation for fragments in React.

The %TYPE attribute lets use the datatype of a field, record, nested table, database column, or variable in your own declarations, rather than hardcoding the type names.

You can use the %TYPE attribute as a datatype specifier when declaring constants, variables, fields, and parameters. If the types that you reference change, your declarations are automatically updated.

This technique saves you from making code changes when, for example, the length of a VARCHAR2 column is increased. Note that column constraints, such as the NOT NULL and check constraint, or default values are not inherited by items declared using %TYPE.