React/es6 difference between exports createClass and extends Component

Question

I am starting out with react and es6 and and trying to determine the real difference between

export const Voting = React.createClass({ ... })

a

Answer 1

From the blog post that announced ES6 class support:

JavaScript originally didn't have a built-in class system. Every popular framework built their own, and so did we. This means that you have a learn slightly different semantics for each framework.

We figured that we're not in the business of designing a class system. We just want to use whatever is the idiomatic JavaScript way of creating classes.

In React 0.13.0 you no longer need to use React.createClass to create React components. If you have a transpiler you can use ES6 classes today.

So, both do the same thing (define a React component), but ES6 classes is the more native way to do it (no custom React boilerplate code) and as such it is much easier to reason about the code. This should be the preferred way of creating React components.

There are two notable differences between React.createClass and ES6 classes though (also mentioned in that blog post):

• Autobinding - React.createClass autobinds all methods to the current instance. With ES6 classes you have to do that yourself.

• Mixins - ES6 classes have no direct support for mixins like React.createClass did.