Handling Events in React
Making your React applications interactive.

Handling events with React elements is very similar to handling events on DOM elements. There are some syntactic differences:

  • React events are named using camelCase, rather than lowercase (e.g., `onClick` instead of `onclick`).
  • With JSX you pass a function as the event handler, rather than a string.

For example, the HTML:

<button onclick="activateLasers()">Activate Lasers</button>

is slightly different in React:

<button onClick={activateLasers}>Activate Lasers</button>

Another difference is that you cannot return `false` to prevent default behavior in React. You must call `event.preventDefault()` explicitly.

Test Your Knowledge

How do you handle an `onClick` event in a React button?

What is the purpose of `event.preventDefault()` in an event handler?

In React, event handlers are typically passed as:

What is `event.stopPropagation()` used for?