How should I convert jsx libraries and elements to normal function calls? Is there any difference between the following two code samples (example simple app component with react-router components is just an example, could be anything, or any element types like 'div', or 'p', or other jsx library):

// normal jsx
const PublicApp = () => (
 <Switch>
 <Route path="/register" component=Register />
 <Route path="/login" component=Login />
 <Route path="/about" component=About />
 <Redirect to="/login" />
 </Switch>
)

// desired api
const PublicApp = () =>
 Switch(
 ,
 Route( path: '/register', component: Register ),
 Route( path: '/login', component: Login ),
 Route( path: '/about', component: About ),
 Redirect( to: '/login' )
 )

// required helpers
import createElement as h from 'react'
import * as ReactRouter from 'react-router'

export const Switch = (props, ...children) =>
 h(ReactRouter.Switch, props, ...children)

export const Route = (props, ...children) =>
 h(ReactRouter.Route, props, ...children)

export const Redirect = (props, ...children) =>
 h(ReactRouter.Redirect, props, ...children)

export const Div = (props, ...children) => h('div', props, ...children)

. . . .

Both seem to work fine. Any problem with doing this on a large scale? Also, seems sort of silly to have to manually wrap every element type. Is there a better way than using a converter like this:

const converter = el => (props, ...children) => h(el, props, ...children)

export const Switch = converter(ReactRouter.Switch)

export const Route = converter(ReactRouter.Route)

export const Redirect = converter(ReactRouter.Redirect)

export const Div = converter('div')

I'm not sure this answers your question, because I'm not sure your question even is answerable.

What I think you want is a JavaScript equivalent of e.g. this Reagent (clojurescript React wrapper library) component:

(defn MyComponent [name]
 [:div.my-component
 [:p.my-component-content
 "Hello there "
 [:span.my-component-name 
 :style :color "red" 
 name]]])

For those not down with the cljs, it's a pure functional React component with a single prop (name) and renders out a div tag with css class 'my-component' that contains a p tag with a span etc. etc. Contrast that with this:

const MyComponent = (name) => (
 <div className="my-component">
 <p className="my-component-content">
 "Hello there " <span className="my-component-name" style="color:red;">name</span>
 </p>
 </div>
);

Not much difference at first blush except... in the ClojureScript version all of those declarative html bits are first-class regular ClojureScript data structures. You can introspect on them using all of the regular language constructs and tools, because unlike JSX it's not an embedded DSL. You can kinda sorta get this out of JSX by adding refs, but it's not pretty.

Note that the explicit React.createElement version doesn't have this problem, it's objects all the way down and you have references in the lexical scope like you would for any other binding. But you lose declarative-ness: the explicit version is far more verbose (and if you want the benefits you have to use it for everything).

I'm not sure there is a way to have your cake (declarative terseness) and eat it too (first-class language constructs) in JavaScript React. Since Facebook pays some very talented engineers a lot of money to work on this exact problem, and their solution was to embed JSX as a DSL, I'm guessing no. But it would be cool if you could.

One last point on that though.

Be careful about straying too far from the beaten path. If you do something too weird someone else is going come along (maybe even future you) and look at some weird thing you did for the sake of developer ergonomics and say "WTF I can't even read this hot garbage". Innovation happens in that space, but so does a lot of disasters.

After some searching, it appears that njsx has the best and most well thought out api.

Third-party library components can be individually wrapped in the nsjx default export.

You can even do point-free rendering (tested with ramda.compose):

<Provider store=store>
 <PersistGate loading=null persistor=persistor>
 <BrowserRouter>
 <Route path="/" component=App />
 </BrowserRouter>
 </PersistGate>
</Provider>

becomes:

compose(
 Provider( store ),
 PersistGate( loading: null, persistor ),
 BrowserRouter,
 Route
)( path: '/', component: App )()

From the docs:

No-JSX

A pure function based interface for creating React and React Native components without JSX tags.

If you love React but don't quite like the embeded HTML tags this library may be what you are looking for. Construct your components with code only in a clean, declarative way.

const myView = () =>
 div.app(
 div.header(
 img(src: logo, alt:'logo'),
 h2('Welcome to NJSX')
 )
 )()