Quick Recap : Hooks

Hooks useState & useEffect

Hooks with HTML Form

So the theory in React is that a piece of UI can “react” in response to a state change. The basic form for expressing this flow was an ES6 class up until now. Consider the following example, an ES6 class extending from React.Component, with an internal state:

import React, { Component } from "react";

export default class Button extends Component {
  constructor() {
    super();
    this.state = { buttonText: "Click me, please" };
    this.handleClick = this.handleClick.bind(this);
  }

  handleClick() {
    this.setState(() => {
      return { buttonText: "Thanks, been clicked!" };
    });
  }

  render() {
    const { buttonText } = this.state;
    return <button onClick={this.handleClick}>{buttonText}</button>;
  }
}

As you can see from the code above the component’s internal state gets mutated by setState when clicking the button. The text’s button in turns reacts to this change and gets the updated text.

A more concise version of the component can be expressed by removing the constructor thanks to class fields:

import React, { Component } from "react";

export default class Button extends Component {
  state = { buttonText: "Click me, please" };

  handleClick = () => {
    this.setState(() => {
      return { buttonText: "Thanks, been clicked!" };
    });
  };

  render() {
    const { buttonText } = this.state;
    return <button onClick={this.handleClick}>{buttonText}</button>;
  }
}

So, in the beginning there was setState (and still it will be). But keep calm. The style above is perfectly fine and ES6 classes in React won’t go away anytime soon.

But now with React hooks it’s possible to express the flow internal state change

UI reaction without using an ES6 class.

So what options do we have for managing the internal state in React now that setState and classes are not a need anymore?

Enter the first and most important React hook: useState. useState is a function exposed by the react package. You will import that function at the top of your files as

import React, { useState } from "react";

1. By importing useState in your code you’re signaling the intent to hold some kind of state inside your React component. And more important, that React component shouldn’t be an ES6 class anymore. It can be a pure and simple JavaScript function. This is the most appealing thing of this hooks story.

After importing useState you’ll pick an array containing two variables out of useState, and the code should go inside your React component:

const [buttonText, setButtonText] = useState("Click me, please");

1. Confused by this syntax? It’s ES6 de-structuring. The names above can be anything you want, it doesn’t matter for React. Anyway I advise using descriptive and meaningful variable names depending on the state’s purpose.

The argument passed to useState is the actual starting state, the data that will be subject to changes. useState returns for you two bindings:

• the actual value for the state

• the state updater function for said state

So the previous example, a button component, with hooks becomes:

import React, { useState } from "react";

export default function Button() {
 const [buttonText, setButtonText] = useState("Click me, please");

 return (
 <button onClick={() => setButtonText("Thanks, been clicked!")}>
 {buttonText}
 </button>
 );
}

For calling the setButtonText state updater inside the onClick handler you can use an inline arrow function. But if you prefer using a regular function you can do:

import React, { useState } from "react";

export default function Button() {
 const [buttonText, setButtonText] = useState("Click me, please");

 function handleClick() {
 return setButtonText("Thanks, been clicked!");
 }

 return <button onClick={handleClick}>{buttonText}</button>;
}

Must be honest, I fancy regular functions more than arrow functions, unless I have specific requirements. Readability improves a lot. Also, when I write code I think always of the next developer that will mantain that code. And my code should be readable.

React hooks, that’s it! I could end this post here but not before showing you how to fetch data with hooks.

Data fetching in React functional Components

Do you remember the old days of componentDidMount? You would slap fetch(url) in componentDidMount and call it a day. Here’s how to fetch an array of data from an API for rendering out a nice list:

import React, { Component } from "react";

export default class DataLoader extends Component {
  state = { data: [] };

  componentDidMount() {
    fetch("http://localhost:3001/links/")
      .then(response => response.json())
      .then(data =>
        this.setState(() => {
          return { data };
        })
      );
  }
  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        <ul>
          {this.state.data.map(el => (
            <li key={el.id}>{el.title}</li>
          ))}
        </ul>
      </div>
    );
  }
}

I thought data fetching with React hooks shouldn’t look so different from useState. A quick glance at the documentation gave me an hint: useEffect could be the right tool for the job.

I read: “useEffect serves the same purpose as componentDidMount, componentDidUpdate, and componentWillUnmount in React classes, but unified into a single API”

Bingo! It’s amazing, isn’t it? With this knowledge in hand I refactored the first version of Data-loader for using useEffect. The component becomes a function and fetch gets called inside useEffect. Moreover, instead of calling this.setState I can use setData (an arbitrary function extracted from useState):

import React, { useState, useEffect } from "react";

export default function DataLoader() {
  const [data, setData] = useState([]);

  useEffect(() => {
    fetch("http://localhost:3001/links/")
      .then(response => response.json())
      .then(data => setData(data));
  });
  return (
    <div>
      <ul>
        {data.map(el => (
          <li key={el.id}>{el.title}</li>
        ))}
      </ul>
    </div>
  );
}

“useEffect serves the same purpose as componentDidMount, componentDidUpdate, and componentWillUnmount“

componentDidUpdate! componentDidUpdate is a lifecycle method running every time a component gets new props, or a state change happens.

That’s the trick. If you call useEffect like I did you would see an infinite loop. And for solving this “bug” you would need to pass an empty array as a second argument to useEffect:

 useEffect(() => {
 fetch("http://localhost:3001/links/")
 .then(response => response.json())
 .then(data => setData(data));
 }, []); // << super important array