Portals

A typical use case for portals is when a parent component has an overflow: hidden or z-index style, but you need the child to visually “break out” of its container. For example, modals, popovers, and tooltips.

Portals provide a first-class way to render children into a DOM node that exists outside the DOM hierarchy of the parent component.

ReactDOM.createPortal(child, container)

The first argument (child) is any renderable React child, such as an element, string, or fragment. The second argument (container) is a DOM element.

Usage Normally, when you return an element from a component’s render method, it’s mounted into the DOM as a child of the nearest parent node:

render() {
  // React mounts a new div and renders the children into it
  return (
    <div>
      {this.props.children}
    </div>
  );
}

However, sometimes it’s useful to insert a child into a different location in the DOM:

render() {
  // React does *not* create a new div. It renders the children into `domNode`.
  // `domNode` is any valid DOM node, regardless of its location in the DOM.
  return ReactDOM.createPortal(
    this.props.children,
    domNode,
  );
}