This avoids having to ship bundled JavaScript and having to serve secondary API requests to hydrate the component. React Server Components are a preview feature that can be enabled in React 18.

Beyond the usual quick tips, let's look at both the business case and the technical side of keeping React bundles lean.

Listing 1 shows how props are handled in a function-based component tree. The process is similar with classes. The function-based example shows off the more streamlined syntax of the functional style.