Render a React component based on its name

Question

Context: I am developing a widget-based webapp, (like the defunct iGoogle, where users can choose which widgets they want to display). Each widget is a React component.

Simplified example: Here are 2 different widgets

var HelloWidget = React.createClass({
    render: function() { return <div>Hello {this.props.name}</div>; }
});

var HiWidget = React.createClass({
    render: function() {  return <div>Hi {this.props.name}</div>; }
});

As a user, I have chosen the HiWidget and my name is "dude" so when the system gets my preferences from the persistence layer it looks like this:

var dataFromDb = {
    type: 'HiWidget',
    name: 'dude'
};

How can I render a React component when I have its name in a string var ?

I tried this, based on Dynamically Rendering a React component :

React.render(
  <dataFromDb.type name={dataFromDb.name} />,
  document.getElementById('try2')
);

It used to work with React 0.11, but not anymore.

And I would like to avoid having a giant switch statement:

switch (dataFromDb.type) {
    case 'HiWidget':
        var component = <HiWidget name={dataFromDb.name} />;
        break;
    case 'HelloWidget':
        var component = <HelloWidget name={dataFromDb.name} />;
        break;
}
React.render(
  component,
  document.getElementById('try3')
);

JSFiddle with all this code here: http://jsfiddle.net/61xdfjk5/

Answer 1

You could use an object as a lookup for the component type and keep the details of rendering it in one place:

var components = {
  'HiWidget': HiWidget,
  'HelloWidget': HelloWidget
}

var Component = components[dataFromObj.type]
React.render(
  <Component name={dataFromObj.name}/>,
  document.getElementById('try3')
)