What causes transition(myComponent) to fail in this React 18 application?

Question

I have been developing a SPA using React 18 and the Movie Database (TMDB) API.

I am now adding transitions between routes(pages) with the help of Framer Motion.

To do this, I added a transition.js file in /src with the following content:

import { motion } from "framer-motion";

const transition = (OgComponent) => {
  return () => {
    <>
      <OgComponent />

      <motion.div
      className="slide-in"
      initial={{ opacity: 0, x: '-100px' }}
      animate={{ opacity: 1, x: 0, transition: { duration: 0.3 } }}
      exit={{ opacity: 0, x: 0, transition: { duration: 0.3 } }}
    >
      <motion.div />
    </>
  }
}

export default transition;

I use import transition from '../../transition' to import the above transition into a component of the application and wrap the exported component in it. See the Movielist component as an example:

import { useEffect, useState } from 'react';
import { useLocation } from 'react-router-dom';
import axios from 'axios';
import Moviecard from '../Moviecard/Moviecard';
import transition from '../../transition';

function Movielist({ page_title, listMovies }) {

    const API_URL = 'https://api.themoviedb.org/3';
    const location = useLocation();
    const [movies, setMovies] = useState([]);

    const getMovies = async () => {
        const { data: { results } } = await axios.get(`${API_URL}/movie/${listMovies}`, {
            params: {
                api_key: process.env.REACT_APP_API_KEY
            }
        });

        setMovies(results);
    }

    const displayMovies = () => {
        return movies.map(movie => (
            <Moviecard
                key={movie.id}
                movie={movie}
            />
        ))
    }

    useEffect(() => {
        getMovies();
    }, [location])

    return (
        <>
            <h1 className="page-title">{ page_title }</h1>
            <div className="row movie-list">
                { displayMovies() }
            </div>
        </>
    );
}

export default transition(Movielist);

In App.js I have the "normal" route:

import { Routes, Route } from 'react-router-dom';
import Topbar from './components/Topbar/Topbar';
import Footer from './components/Footer/Footer';
import Movielist from './components/Movielist/Movielist';
import Moviedetails from './components/Moviedetails/Moviedetails';
import Actordetails from './components/Actordetails/Actordetails';

function App() {
  return (
    <div className="App">
      <Topbar />
      <div className="container">
        <Routes>
          <Route path="/" element={<Movielist page_title="Now playing" listMovies="now_playing" />} />
          <Route path="/top-rated" element={<Movielist page_title="Top rated" listMovies="top_rated" />} />
          <Route path="/movie/:id" element={<Moviedetails />} />
          <Route path="/actor/:id" element={<Actordetails />} />
        </Routes>
      </div>
      <Footer />
    </div>
  );
}

export default App;

Sandbox

There is a sandbox, the code is here.

question

Changing export default myComponent to export default transition(myComponent) will make the component unable to render.

edit

this way...

const transition = (OgComponent) => {
  return () => (
    <>
      <OgComponent />

      <motion.div
        className="slide-in"
        initial={{ opacity: 0, x: 0 }}
        animate={{ opacity: 1, x: 100, transition: { duration: 0.5 } }}
        exit={{ opacity: 0, x: 0, transition: { duration: 0.5 } }}
      />
    </>
  );
};

Throws this Error :

Request failed, status code 404 AxiosError: Request failed Status code 404 When resolved (http://localhost:3000/static/js/bundle.js:63343:12) In XMLHttpRequest.onloadend (http://localhost:3000/static/js/bundle.js:62034:66)

Everything was working fine until I tried to add a smooth page transition .

question

1. What did i do wrong?
2. What is the most reliable way to solve this problem?

Answer 1

The error occurs because the function returned from the transition function does not render the component; it returns undefined instead.

const transition = (OgComponent) => {
  // the function below does not return the component
  return () => {
    <>
      <OgComponent />
      ...
    </>
  }
}

To solve this problem, you can remove the curly braces or define an explicit return for the inner function:

Explicit return

const transition = (OgComponent) => {
  return () => {
    return (
      <>
        <OgComponent />

        <motion.div
          className="slide-in"
          initial={{ opacity: 0, x: 0 }}
          animate={{ opacity: 1, x: 100, transition: { duration: 0.5 } }}
          exit={{ opacity: 0, x: 0, transition: { duration: 0.5 } }}
        />
        <motion.div />
      </>
    )

  }
}

Answer 2

I think what you want (it looks like that's what you want to do, good job!) is to create a Higher Order Component that wraps your page component in framermotion of code>motion.div so that it can transform your component for you.

Try changing your conversion code to:

import React from "react";
import { motion } from "framer-motion";

export const withTransition = (TransitioningComponent) => {
  class WithTransition extends React.Component {
    render() {
      return (
        <motion.div
          className="slide-in"
          initial={{ opacity: 0, x: '-100px' }}
          animate={{ opacity: 1, x: 0, transition: { duration: 0.3 } }}
          exit={{ opacity: 0, x: 0, transition: { duration: 0.5 } }}
        >
          <TransitioningComponent {...this.props} />
        </motion.div>
      );
    }
  }

  WithTransition.displayName = `WithTransition(${
    TransitioningComponent.displayName || TransitioningComponent.name
  })`;

  return WithTransition;
};

You can then call it by passing the page component as the TransitioningComponent parameter to withTransition and export it from a jsx file.

// Movielist.jsx line 41
export default withTransition(Movielist);

View working code sandbox here

This is a gif of it in action

The

404 error you keep getting from axios is due to an expired API key stored in the codesandbox .env file. I think the query failed due to a 403 - Access Denied response. I haven't checked, but this makes the most sense to me. I've commented out some of the axios calls so you can see the transformation working.

Hope this answer is helpful to you!