How to resolve Error: Element type is invalid: expected a string or a class/function but got: null

If you are a React developer, you might have encountered this error message at some point: Error: Element type is invalid: expected a string (for built-in components) or a class/function (for composite components) but got: null. This error usually means that you are trying to render a component that is not defined or imported correctly. In this blog post, I will show you some common causes and solutions for this error.

One possible cause of this error is that you are using a default export for your component, but you are importing it with curly braces. For example, if you have a component like this:

export default function MyComponent() {
return <div>Hello, world!</div>;
}

And you import it like this:

import { MyComponent } from "./MyComponent";

You will get the error because you are not importing the default export, but a named export that does not exist. To fix this, you can either change your import statement to:

import MyComponent from "./MyComponent";

Or change your export statement to:

export function MyComponent() {
return <div>Hello, world!</div>;
}

Another possible cause of this error is that you are using a named export for your component, but you are importing it without curly braces. For example, if you have a component like this:

export function MyComponent() {
return <div>Hello, world!</div>;
}

And you import it like this:

import MyComponent from "./MyComponent";

You will get the error because you are not importing the named export, but the default export that does not exist. To fix this, you can either change your import statement to:

import { MyComponent } from "./MyComponent";

Or change your export statement to:

export default function MyComponent() {
return <div>Hello, world!</div>;
}

A third possible cause of this error is that you are using a wrong file extension for your component. For example, if you have a component like this:

function MyComponent() {
return <div>Hello, world!</div>;
}

And you save it as MyComponent.js instead of MyComponent.jsx, you will get the error because React does not recognize the JSX syntax in a .js file. To fix this, you can either change your file extension to .jsx or add the following line at the top of your file:

import React from "react";

This will tell React to transpile the JSX code into JavaScript.

These are some of the most common causes and solutions for the Error: Element type is invalid: expected a string (for built-in components) or a class/function (for composite components) but got: null. I hope this blog post was helpful and informative for you. If you have any questions or feedback, please leave a comment below. Thank you for reading!