ReactJS this.state null

Question

Let me preface this by saying I am a novice to ReactJS. I am trying to learn by making a simple site that populates data using React. I have a JSON file that contains link data that will be looped through with map.

I have tried setting it as the components state then passing it to the navbar links via a prop but I am getting "Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'data' of null"

I tried to look around for solutions but could not find anything.

Note: When I try to hard code an object and map through it that way it returns map is undefined. However I am not sure that is directly related to the setState error.

/** @jsx React.DOM */

var conf = {
    companyName: "Slant Hosting"
  };

var NavbarLinks = React.createClass({
  render: function(){
    var navLinks = this.props.data.map(function(link){
      return(
        <li><a href={link.target}>{link.text}</a></li>
      );
    });
    return(
      <ul className="nav navbar-nav">
        {navLinks}
      </ul>
    )
  }
});

var NavbarBrand = React.createClass({
  render: function(){
    return(
      <a className="navbar-brand" href="#">{conf.companyName}</a>
    );
  }
});

var Navbar = React.createClass({
  getInitalState: function(){
    return{
      data : []
    };
  },
  loadNavbarJSON: function() {
    $.ajax({
      url: "app/js/configs/navbar.json",
      dataType: 'json',
      success: function(data) {
        this.setState({
          data: data
        });
        console.log(data);
        console.log(this.state.data);
      }.bind(this),
      error: function(xhr, status, err) {
        console.error(this.props.url, status, err.toString());
      }.bind(this)
    });
  },
  componentDidMount: function(){
    this.loadNavbarJSON();
  },
  render: function(){
    return(
      <nav className="navbar navbar-default navbar-fixed-top" role="navigation">
        <div className="container-fluid">
          <div className="navbar-header">
            <NavbarBrand />
          </div>
          <NavbarLinks data={this.state.data} />
        </div>
      </nav>
    );
  }
});

var Header = React.createClass({
  render: function(){
    return(
      <Navbar />
    );
  }
});

React.renderComponent(
  <Header />,
  document.getElementById('render')
);

Answer 1

Using ES6, the initial state must be created in your constructor for the React component class, like this:

constructor(props) {
    super(props)
    this.state ={
    // Set your state here
    }
}

See this documentation.