RFC: Context should accept non-children props as value

[Gokul-Gireesh]

This RFC proposes allowing React Context to accept non-children props as the provided value.

• Keeps value for backward compatibility.
• If no value is passed, all non-children props become the context value.
• Excludes children from injection.
• Simplifies context usage and makes it consistent with normal prop-passing in React.

Example:

<MyContext foo={foo} bar={bar}>
  <App />
</MyContext>

Consumer:

const { foo, bar } = useContext(MyContext);

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[josephsavona]

Thanks for posting. I don’t think we’re likely to proceed with this change: it’s confusing. In the existing API there’s a clear, 1:1 match between the value you pass to a context provider and the value you get back out w useContext(). The proposal has a number of issues:

• implicit object creation
• unclear what should happen if you pass both a value and other props
• Hard to type in type systems

More fundamentally, it isn’t clear this is solving a real problem. We’re always open to exploring api changes, but in this case I don’t think we will proceed given the clear problems and lack of a strong motivation.

[Gokul-Gireesh]

Thanks for the detailed feedback. I realize I may not have fully updated the PR comment when submitting — the Value Handling Rules in my commit already clarify how value is handled alongside other props.

I understand the concerns about implicit object creation, TypeScript typing, and whether this really solves a problem, and I see how that could add complexity.

Some of the points may reflect my earlier misunderstandings, so I appreciate the clarification and the focus on keeping the API predictable and backward-compatible.

[vezaynk]

I think there's very little value in something that's trivially easy to implement by yourself.

const Context2 = ({ children, ...value }) => <React.Context value={value} children={children} />

[fuunnx]

Yes but be carefull about performances here : you're recreating a new value object during each render. You may want to memoize it