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Part 3 / Component composition / Checking for slot content

The images in this exercise don't currently work. You can switch to the old tutorial instead: https://svelte.dev/tutorial/optional-slots

In some cases, you may want to control parts of your component based on whether the parent passes in content for a certain slot. Perhaps you have a wrapper around that slot, and you don't want to render it if the slot is empty. Or perhaps you'd like to apply a class only if the slot is present. You can do this by checking the properties of the special $$slots variable.

$$slots is an object whose keys are the names of the slots passed in by the parent component. If the parent leaves a slot empty, then $$slots will not have an entry for that slot.

Notice that both instances of <Project> in this example render a container for comments and a notification dot, even though only one has comments. We want to use $$slots to make sure we only render these elements when the parent <App> passes in content for the comments slot.

In Project.svelte, update the class:has-discussion directive on the <article>:

<article class:has-discussion={$$slots.comments}>

Next, wrap the comments slot and its wrapping <div> in an if block that checks $$slots:

{#if $$slots.comments}
	<div class="discussion">
		<h3>Comments</h3>
		<slot name="comments"></slot>
	</div>
{/if}

Now the comments container and the notification dot won't render when <App> leaves the comments slot empty.

Next: Slot props

initialising