agent-skills/skills/vue-best-practices/reference/render-function-functional-components.md

title, impact, impactDescription, type, tags

title	impact	impactDescription	type	tags
Use Functional Components for Stateless Presentational UI	LOW	Functional components reduce overhead for simple stateless components	best-practice	vue3 render-function functional-component performance

Use Functional Components for Stateless Presentational UI

Impact: LOW - Functional components are plain functions that return vnodes without component instance overhead. They're ideal for simple presentational components that don't need internal state, lifecycle hooks, or reactivity.

Functional components in Vue 3 are defined as plain functions that receive props and a context object (containing slots, emit, and attrs). They have slightly less overhead than stateful components.

Task Checklist

• Consider functional components for stateless UI like icons, badges, or simple layouts
• Define props and emits as static properties on the function
• Access slots, emit, and attrs from the context parameter
• Use inheritAttrs: false when manually spreading attrs

Basic Functional Component:

import { h } from 'vue'

// Simple functional component
function MyButton(props, { slots }) {
  return h('button', { class: 'btn' }, slots.default?.())
}

// With props definition
MyButton.props = ['disabled', 'variant']

export default MyButton

With TypeScript:

import { h } from 'vue'
import type { FunctionalComponent } from 'vue'

interface Props {
  message: string
  type?: 'info' | 'warning' | 'error'
}

const Alert: FunctionalComponent<Props> = (props, { slots }) => {
  return h('div', {
    class: ['alert', `alert-${props.type || 'info'}`]
  }, [
    h('span', props.message),
    slots.default?.()
  ])
}

Alert.props = {
  message: { type: String, required: true },
  type: String
}

export default Alert

With Emits:

import { h } from 'vue'
import type { FunctionalComponent } from 'vue'

interface Props {
  value: string
}

interface Emits {
  (e: 'update', value: string): void
  (e: 'clear'): void
}

const SearchInput: FunctionalComponent<Props, Emits> = (props, { emit }) => {
  return h('div', { class: 'search-input' }, [
    h('input', {
      value: props.value,
      onInput: (e: Event) => emit('update', (e.target as HTMLInputElement).value)
    }),
    h('button', { onClick: () => emit('clear') }, 'Clear')
  ])
}

SearchInput.props = ['value']
SearchInput.emits = ['update', 'clear']

export default SearchInput

Disabling Attribute Inheritance:

import { h } from 'vue'

function CustomInput(props, { attrs }) {
  return h('div', { class: 'input-wrapper' }, [
    h('input', { ...attrs, class: 'custom-input' })
  ])
}

CustomInput.inheritAttrs = false

export default CustomInput

When to Use Functional Components

Good candidates:

• Icons and badges
• Simple wrapper/layout components
• Pure presentational components
• Components that just format or display data

// Icon component - good use case
function Icon(props) {
  return h('svg', {
    class: `icon icon-${props.name}`,
    width: props.size || 24,
    height: props.size || 24
  }, [
    h('use', { href: `#icon-${props.name}` })
  ])
}
Icon.props = ['name', 'size']

// Badge component - good use case
function Badge(props, { slots }) {
  return h('span', {
    class: ['badge', `badge-${props.variant || 'default'}`]
  }, slots.default?.())
}
Badge.props = ['variant']

Not recommended for:

• Components needing reactive state (use ref, reactive)
• Components needing lifecycle hooks
• Components with complex logic
• Components that need to use composables

Functional vs Stateful Comparison

// Functional - no reactivity, no lifecycle
function StaticLabel(props) {
  return h('span', { class: 'label' }, props.text)
}
StaticLabel.props = ['text']

// Stateful - when you need state or lifecycle
export default {
  setup(props) {
    const count = ref(0)

    onMounted(() => {
      console.log('Mounted!')
    })

    return () => h('button', {
      onClick: () => count.value++
    }, count.value)
  }
}

Reference

• Vue.js Functional Components