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Reactjs map works but forEach doesn’t

I’m struggling to understand the difference between forEach and map. In the following render function if the ‘forEach’ is replaced with ‘map’ it works. I don’t understand why it doesn’t work with the ‘forEach’. Both {item.id} and {item.text} are present with both methods. So, why are the props for ‘TodoItem’ not being set when using ‘forEach’ ?

render() {    
  return(

     <ul>
        {this.props.items.forEach(function(item) {

           return (
              <TodoItem id={item.id} text={item.text} />)
        })} 
     </ul>
  );
}

So if ‘forEach’ doesn’t return anything how come this doesn’t work either:

render() {    
  return(

     <ul>
        {this.props.items.forEach(function(item) {               

              <TodoItem id={item.id} text={item.text} />
        })} 
     </ul>
  );
}

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Answer

The map function returns an array of items and forEach just loop over them. To make this code work use :

render() {    
  const items = [];
  this.props.items
    .forEach(item => items.push(
                       <li>
                          <TodoItem id={item.id} key={item.id} text={item.text} />
                       </li>
                     ))

  return(
     <ul>{items}</ul>
  );
}
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