Do we need to import React or just {Component, PropTypes} will do?

Question

in all of my components I am currently including react like this:

import React, {Component, PropTypes} from 'react'

I don't see why everyone is including React when it is not used, hence wanted to check if it is safe to remove it?

Answer 1

It is needed for JSX to work.

What the JSX processor does, essentially, is turn this:

<div />

into this:

React.createElement('div')

There are ways to tell it to use a different function, like createElement and then instead of React always import {createElement} — which is the opposite of an improvement, and you shouldn't do it anyway.