---
title: 'Function Components'
slug: /concepts/function-components
---

Lets revisit this previous statement:

> Yew mostly operates on the idea of keeping everything that a reusable piece of
> UI may need, in one place - rust files.

It is only partially correct, "rust files" should be replaced with "components".

## What are Components?

Components are the building blocks of Yew.

They:

-   Take arguments in form of [Props](./properties.mdx)
-   Can have their own state
-   Get computed into HTML visible to the user (DOM)

## Two flavours of Yew Components

You are currently reading about function components - the recommended way to write components when starting with Yew.

But we have to note that there is a more advanced, but less recommended way to write them - [Struct components](advanced-topics/struct-components/introduction.mdx)

## Creating function components

To create a function component add the `#[function_component]` attribute to a function.
Also name the function in PascalCase as it is the convention for naming components.

```rust
use yew::{function_component, html, Html};

#[function_component]
fn HelloWorld() -> Html {
    html! { "Hello world" }
}

// Then somewhere else you can use the component inside the `html!`
#[function_component]
fn App() -> Html {
    html! {<HelloWorld />}
}
```

## What happens to components

Yew will build a tree of these components that from the previous example would look like this:

```md
<App />
   |
<HelloWorld />
```

It will call those functions / function components to compute a virtual version of the DOM (VDOM) that you as the library user see as the `Html` type.

Yew will compare current DOM with VDOM and only update the new/changed/necessary parts.

This is what we call **rendering**.

:::note

Behind the scenes `Html` type is just an alias for `VNode` - virtual node.

:::