I have a question about useTracker from meteor and react.
const sample = useTracker(
() => func1(),
[slug],
);
Does this mean every time sulg gets changed, fun1 gets running and sample will get a new value? like a dependency array with useEffect?
Thank you
You are partially right, if slug updates your function re-runs but it would also re-run if the function func1 is using a reactive data source.
The documentation for useTracker has a pretty good example:
// This computation uses no value from the outer scope,
// and thus does not needs to pass a 'deps' argument.
// However, we can optimize the use of the computation
// by providing an empty deps array. With it, the
// computation will be retained instead of torn down and
// rebuilt on every render. useTracker will produce the
// same results either way.
const currentUser = useTracker(() => Meteor.user(), []);
// The following two computations both depend on the
// listId prop. When deps are specified, the computation
// will be retained.
const listLoading = useTracker(() => {
// Note that this subscription will get cleaned up
// when your component is unmounted or deps change.
const handle = Meteor.subscribe('todoList', listId);
return !handle.ready();
}, [listId]);
// my personal note: this function updates either if
// lsitId changes OR if Tasks get updated by pub/sub
// for example because documents have been inserted/updated/removed
// on the server
const tasks = useTracker(() => Tasks.find({ listId }).fetch(), [listId]);
see: https://github.com/meteor/react-packages/tree/master/packages/react-meteor-data#usetrackerreactivefn-deps-hook-with-deps
Related
I have a React app that displays stock quotes, the user can add and remove stocks from the list etc. I have an effect to fetch the prices, since it depends on the quotes array, when I add a new quote it'll run the fetch manually. But I also want the prices to be continually updated after a short interval....roughly like below :
function StockApp() {
const [quotes, setQuotes] = useState([]);
// an entry in the quotes array is an object like below
// They come like this straight from the backend which returns
// a simple JSON format
// {
// symbol: 'MSFT',
// price: 298.12
// dayChange: 1.2
// }
useEffect(() => {
const timer = setTimeout(async () => {
const newQuotes = await fetchPrices(quotes);
// this will be a new array
setQuotes(newQuotes);
}, TICKER_REFRESH_INTERVAL);
return () => clearTimeout(timer);
}, [quotes]);
... render function etc
Although the app works fine, my query is about the recursive nature of my useEffect function....as I understand it I'm saying here "Whenever quotes changes, run the function" but the effect function is also changing quotes, it seems like the setTimeout prevents it recursing. I feel like I am not thinking about the problem in the correct way, how can I avoid this cyclic dependency ? Do I need to ?
I have a context/provider that has a websocket as a state variable. Once the socket is initialized, the onMessage callback is set. The callback is something as follows:
const wsOnMessage = (message: any) => {
const data = JSON.parse(message.data);
setProgress(merge(progress, data.progress));
};
Then in the component I have something like this:
function PVCListTableRow(props: any) {
const { pvc } = props;
const { progress } = useMyContext();
useEffect(() => {
console.log('Progress', progress[pvc.metadata.uid])
}, [progress[pvc.metadata.uid]])
return (
{/* stuff */}
);
}
However, the effect isn't triggering when the progress variable gets updated.
The data structure of the progress variable is something like
{
"uid-here": 0.25,
"another-uid-here": 0.72,
...etc,
}
How can I get the useEffect to trigger when the property that matches pvc.metadata.uid gets updated?
Or, how can I get the component to re-render when that value gets updated?
Quoting the docs:
The function passed to useEffect will run after the render is
committed to the screen.
And that's the key part (that many seem to miss): one uses dependency list supplied to useEffect to limit its invokations, but not to set up some conditions extra to that 'after the render is committed'.
In other words, if your component is not considered updated by React, useEffect hooks just won't be called!
Now, it's not clear from your question how exactly your context (progress) looks like, but this line:
setProgress(merge(progress, data.progress));
... is highly suspicious.
See, for React to track the change in object the reference of this object should change. Now, there's a big chance setProgress just assignes value (passed as its parameter) to a variable, and doesn't do any cloning, shallow or deep.
Yet if merge in your code is similar to lodash.merge (and, again, there's a huge chance it actually is lodash.merge; JS ecosystem is not that big these days), it doesn't return a new object; instead it reassigns values from data.progress to progress and returns the latter.
It's pretty easy to check: replace the aforementioned line with...
setProgress({ ...merge(progress, data.progress) });
Now, in this case a new object will be created and its value will be passed to setProgress. I strongly suggest moving this cloning inside setProgress though; sure, you can do some checks there whether or not you should actually force value update, but even without those checks it should be performant enough.
There seems to be no problem... are you sure pvc.metadata.uid key is in the progress object?
another point: move that dependency into a separate variable after that, put it in the dependency array.
Spread operator create a new reference, so it will trigger the render
let updated = {...property};
updated[propertyname] =value;
setProperty(()=>updated);
If you use only the below code snippet, it will not re-render
let updated = property; //here property is the base object
updated[propertyname] = value;
setProperty(()=>updated);
Try [progress['pvc.metadata.uid']]
function PVCListTableRow(props: any) {
const { pvc } = props;
const { progress } = useMyContext();
useEffect(() => {
console.log('Progress', progress[pvc.metadata.uid])
}, [progress['pvc.metadata.uid']])
return (
{/* stuff */}
);
}
I want to wait to apply state updates from the back-end if a certain animation is currently running. This animation could run multiple times depending on the game scenario. I'm using react-native with hooks and firestore.
My plan was to make an array that would store objects of the incoming snapshot and the function which would use that data to update the state. When the animation ended it would set that the animation was running to false and remove the first item of the array. I'd also write a useEffect, which would remove the first item from the array if the length of the array had changed.
I was going to implement this function by checking whether this animation is running or whether there's an item in the array of future updates when the latest snapshot arrives. If that condition was true I'd add the snapshot and the update function to my array, otherwise I'd apply the state update immediately. I need to access that piece of state in all 3 of my firestore listeners.
However, in onSnapshot if I try to access my state it'll give me the initial state from when the function rendered. The one exception is I can access the state if I use the function to set the state, in this case setPlayerIsBetting and access the previous state through the function passed in as a callback to setPlayerIsBetting.
I can think of a few possible solutions, but all of them feel hacky besides the first one, which I'm having trouble implementing.
Would I get the future state updates if I modify the useEffect for the snapshots to not just run when the component is mounted? I briefly tried this, but it seems to be breaking the snapshots. Would anyone know how to implement this?
access the state through calling setPlayerIsBetting in all 3 listeners and just set setPlayerIsBetting to the previous state 99% of the time when its not supposed to be updated. Would it even re-render if nothing is actually changed? Could this cause any other problems?
Throughout the component lifecycle add snapshots and the update functions to the queue instead of just when the animation is running. This might not be optimal for performance right? I wouldn't have needed to worry about it for my initial plan to make a few state updates after an animation runs since i needed to take time to wait for the animation anyway.
I could add the state I need everywhere on the back-end so it would come in with the snapshot.
Some sort of method that removes and then adds the listeners. This feels like a bad idea.
Could redux or some sort of state management tool solve this problem? It would be a lot of work to implement it for this one issue, but maybe my apps at the point where it'd be useful anyway?
Here's my relevant code:
const Game = ({ route }) => {
const [playerIsBetting, setPlayerIsBetting] = useState({
isBetting: false,
display: false,
step: Infinity,
minimumValue: -1000000,
maximumValue: -5000,
});
const [updatesAfterAnimations, setUpdatesAfterAnimations] = useState([]);
// updatesAfterAnimations is currently always empty because I can't access the updated playerIsBetting state easily
const chipsAnimationRunningOrItemsInQueue = (snapshot, updateFunction) => {
console.log(
"in chipsAnimationRunningOrItemsInQueue playerIsBetting is: ",
playerIsBetting
); // always logs the initial state since its called from the snapshots.
// So it doesn't know when runChipsAnimation is added to the state and becomes true.
// So playerIsBetting.runChipsAnimation is undefined
const addToQueue =
playerIsBetting.runChipsAnimation || updatesAfterAnimations.length;
if (addToQueue) {
setUpdatesAfterAnimations((prevState) => {
const nextState = cloneDeep(prevState);
nextState.push({ snapshot, updateFunction });
return nextState;
});
console.log("chipsAnimationRunningOrItemsInQueue returns true!");
return true;
}
console.log("chipsAnimationRunningOrItemsInQueue returns false!");
return false;
};
// listener 1
useEffect(() => {
const db = firebase.firestore();
const tableId = route.params.tableId;
const unsubscribeFromPlayerCards = db
.collection("tables")
.doc(tableId)
.collection("players")
.doc(player.uniqueId)
.collection("playerCards")
.doc(player.uniqueId)
.onSnapshot(
function (cardsSnapshot) {
if (!chipsAnimationRunningOrItemsInQueue(cardsSnapshot, updatePlayerCards)) {
updatePlayerCards(cardsSnapshot);
}
},
function (err) {
// console.log('error is: ', err);
}
);
return unsubscribeFromPlayerCards;
}, []);
};
// listener 2
useEffect(() => {
const tableId = route.params.tableId;
const db = firebase.firestore();
const unsubscribeFromPlayers = db
.collection("tables")
.doc(tableId)
.collection("players")
.onSnapshot(
function (playersSnapshot) {
console.log("in playerSnapshot playerIsBetting is: ", playerIsBetting); // also logs the initial state
console.log("in playerSnapshot playerIsBetting.runChipsAnimation is: "playerIsBetting.runChipsAnimation); // logs undefined
if (!chipsAnimationRunningOrItemsInQueue(playersSnapshot, updatePlayers)) {
updatePlayers(playersSnapshot);
}
},
(err) => {
console.log("error is: ", err);
}
);
return unsubscribeFromPlayers;
}, []);
// listener 3
useEffect(() => {
const db = firebase.firestore();
const tableId = route.params.tableId;
// console.log('tableId is: ', tableId);
const unsubscribeFromTable = db
.collection("tables")
.doc(tableId)
.onSnapshot(
(tableSnapshot) => {
if (!chipsAnimationRunningOrItemsInQueue(tableSnapshot, updateTable)) {
updateTable(tableSnapshot);
}
},
(err) => {
throw new err();
}
);
return unsubscribeFromTable;
}, []);
I ended up not going with any of the solutions I proposed.
I realized that I could access the up to date state by using a ref. How to do it is explained here: (https://medium.com/geographit/accessing-react-state-in-event-listeners-with-usestate-and-useref-hooks-8cceee73c559) And this is the relevant code sample from that post: (https://codesandbox.io/s/event-handler-use-ref-4hvxt?from-embed)
Solution #1 could've worked, but it would be difficult because I'd have to work around the cleanup function running when the animation state changes. (Why is the cleanup function from `useEffect` called on every render?)
I could work around this by having the cleanup function not call the function to unsubscribe from the listener and store the unsubscribe functions in state and put them all in a useEffect after the component mounts with a 2nd parameter that confirmed all 3 unsubscribe functions had been added to state.
But if a user went offline before those functions were in state I think there could be memory leaks.
I would go with solution #1: In the UseEffect() hooks you could put a boolean flag in so the snapshot listener is only set once per hook. Then put the animation state property in the useEffect dependency array so that each useEffect hook is triggered when the animation state changes and you can then run whatever logic you want from that condition.
So I have a question regarding useEffect dependenices
This is from the react docs:
useEffect(() => {
document.title = `You clicked ${count} times`;
}, [count]); // Only re-run the effect if count changes
What does this mean exactly, does React keep track of the count variable and its value, and reacts when the value changes, or does React keep track of the first element in the array and its value.
What do I mean by this? Let me explain more. So if we have something like this [name] as dependencies. At the moment of evaluation, the array might result with ['Bob'] or ['Steve']. Clearly this is a change and the useEffect will rerender the component. But how does it check it?
Does it keep track of name or does it keep track of dependencyArray[0]. If we take a look in the previous example, both of these would result to true, name and the first element both changed their values from 'Bob' to 'Steve'. But how does it actually work?
Currently in my code I am using something like this [employees[selectedEmployee].name], where selectedEmployee is something clickable on the UI and it becomes 'Bob' or 'Steve'
ex:
const employees = {
Bob: {
name: 'Bob'
},
Steve: {
name: 'Steve'
}
}
This means that in the end, when evaluated, the dependency array will still result with ['Bob'] --> ['Steve'], and if React is evaluating the dependencyArray[0] then that has clearly changed and component should rerender, but If it keeps track of the reference, then I am changing the reference altogether and it may cause problems.
So what's the correct approach? Can I use dynamic properties like employees[selectedEmployee].name as a dependency?
count is a value, not a reference.
It's just good old Javascript, nothing fancy:
const myArray = [ count ]; // new array containing the value of variable 'count'
const myFunction = () => {
document.title = `You clicked ${count} times`;
}
useEffect(
myFunction,
myArray
);
// Means actually:
// "Run this function if any value in the array
// is different to what it was last time this useEffect() was called"
does React keep track of the ... value, or ... the reference ?
React doesn't really 'keep track' of any of them. It only checks the difference to a previous call, and forgets about everything else.
Can I use dynamic properties as a dependency?
Yes, you can (because they are not as 'dynamic' as you think).
So what's the correct approach?
Better think less of any react-magic going on, but
understand that the component is a function, and believe React calls it when necessary and
think about the variables (properties and state) used inside it, from a plain Javascript perspective.
Then your 'dynamic properties' become 'constant variables during one function call'. No matter which variables change dynamically and how, it will always be one value last time and one value now.
Explaination:
The important 'trick' here is, that the component is just a javascript function, that is called like 'whenever anything might have changed', and consequently useEffect() is also called (as useEffect() is just a function call inside the component).
Only the callback function passed to useEffect is not always called.
useEffect does not render the component, useEffect is called when the component is called, and then just calls the function given to it, or not, depending on if any value in the dependencies array is different to what it was last time useEffect() was called.
React might rerender the component if in the function given to useEffect there are any changes made to the state or something (anything that makes React to think it has to rerender), but that's as a result of this state change, where ever it came from, not because of the useEffect call.
Example:
const MyComponent = (props) => {
// I'm assigning many const here to show we are dealing with local constants.
// Usually you would use this form (using array destructuring):
// const [ selectedEmployee, setSelectedEmployee ] = useState( someInitialValue );
const myStateValueAndSetter = useState( 'Bob' );
const selectedEmployee = myStateValueAndSetter[0];
const setSelectedEmployee = myStateValueAndSetter[1];
const employees = {
Bob: { name: 'Bob' },
Steve: { name: 'Steve' }
};
const currentName = employees[ selectedEmployee ].name;
useEffect(() => {
document.title = 'current name: ' + currentName;
}, [ currentName ]);
return <MyClickableComponent onClick={( newValue ) => {
setSelectedEmployee( newValue )
}}>;
};
click on MyClickableComponent calls the current setSelectedEmployee( newValue ) function.
(The constant selectedEmployee is not changed!)
MyComponent() is called again.
(This is a new function call. All the constants are gone! Only React stores some state in the background.)
useState() is called, the result is stored in a new constant selectedEmployee.
useEffect() is called, and decides if its callback should be called, depending on the previous and the current value of selectedEmployee.
If the callback is not called and nothing else is changed, you might not notice that anything has happened at all.
<MyClickableComponent ... /> is rendered.
I'd like to know how does React "freezes" the closure while using the useCallback hook (and with others as well), and then only updates variables used inside the hook when you pass them into the inputs parameter.
I understand that the "freeze" may not be very clear, so I created a REPL.it that shows what I mean: https://repl.it/repls/RudeMintcreamShoutcast. Once you open the code, open your web browser console and start clicking on the count button.
How come the value outside compared to the one inside, for the same variable, is different, if they're under the same closure and referencing the same thing? I'm not familiar with React codebase and so I suppose I'm missing an under the hood implementation detail here, but I tried to think how that could work for several minutes but couldn't come up with a good understanding on how React is achieving that.
The first time the component is rendered, the useCallback hook will take the function that is passed as its argument and stores it behind the scenes. When you call the callback, it will call your function. So far, so good.
The second time that the component is rendered, the useCallback hook will check the dependencies you passed in. If they have not changed, the function you pass in is totally ignored! When you call the callback, it will call the function you passed in on the first render, which still references the same values from that point in time. This has nothing to do with the values you passed in as dependencies - it's just normal JavaScript closures!
When the dependencies change, the useCallback hook will take the function you pass in and replace the function it has stored. When you call the callback, it will call the new version of the function.
So in other words, there's no "frozen"/conditionally updated variables - it's just storing a function and then re-using it, nothing more fancy than that :)
EDIT: Here's an example that demonstrates what's going on in pure JavaScript:
// React has some component-local storage that it tracks behind the scenes.
// useState and useCallback both hook into this.
//
// Imagine there's a 'storage' variable for every instance of your
// component.
const storage = {};
function useState(init) {
if (storage.data === undefined) {
storage.data = init;
}
return [storage.data, (value) => storage.data = value];
}
function useCallback(fn) {
// The real version would check dependencies here, but since our callback
// should only update on the first render, this will suffice.
if (storage.callback === undefined) {
storage.callback = fn;
}
return storage.callback;
}
function MyComponent() {
const [data, setData] = useState(0);
const callback = useCallback(() => data);
// Rather than outputting DOM, we'll just log.
console.log("data:", data);
console.log("callback:", callback());
return {
increase: () => setData(data + 1)
}
}
let instance = MyComponent(); // Let's 'render' our component...
instance.increase(); // This would trigger a re-render, so we call our component again...
instance = MyComponent();
instance.increase(); // and again...
instance = MyComponent();
I came here with a similar, rather vague uncertainty about the way useCallback works, its interaction with closures, and the way they are "frozen" by it. I'd like to expand a bit on the accepted answer by proposing to look at the following setup, which shows the working of useCallback (the important aspect is to ignore the linter's warning, for pedagogical reasons):
function App() {
const [a, setA] = useState(0)
const incrementWithUseCallback = useCallback(() => {
// As it closes on the first time `App` is called, the closure is "frozen" in an environment where a=0, forever
console.log(a)
setA(a + 1)
}, []) // but.. the linter should complain about this, saying that `a` should be included!
const incrementWithoutUseCallback = () => {
// This will see every value of a, as a new closure is created at every render (i.e. every time `App` is called)
console.log(a)
setA(a + 1)
}
return (
<div>
<button onClick={incrementWithUseCallback}>Increment with useCallback</button>
<button onClick={incrementWithoutUseCallback}>Increment without useCallback</button>
</div>
)
}
So we clearly see that useCallback effectively "freezes" its closure at a certain moment in time, which is a concept that must be understood clearly, in order to avoid confusing problems, which are sometimes also referred as "stale closures". This article probably does a better job of explaining it than me: https://tkdodo.eu/blog/hooks-dependencies-and-stale-closures
Here's a slightly another view on example code provided by Joe Clay, which emphasizes closure context in which callback is called.
//internal store for states and callbacks
let Store = { data: "+", callback: null };
function functionalComponent(uniqClosureName) {
const data = Store.data;//save value from store to closure variable
const callback = Store.callback = Store.callback || (() => {
console.log('Callback executed in ' + uniqClosureName + ' context');
return data;
});
console.log("data:", data, "callback():", callback());
return {
increase: () => Store.data = Store.data + "+"
}
}
let instance = functionalComponent('First render');
instance.increase();
instance = functionalComponent('Second render');
instance.increase();
instance = functionalComponent('Third render');
As you see, callback without dependencies will be always executed in the closure where it was memorized by useCallback, thus 'freezing' closure.
It happens because when function for callback is created, it is created only once, during first 'render'. Later this function is re-used, and use value of data which was recorded from Store.data during first call.
In the next example you can see the closure 'freezing' logic "in essence".
let globalX = 1;
const f = (() => {
let localX = globalX; return () => console.log(localX); }
)();
globalX = 2;//does not affect localX, it is already saved in the closure
f();//prints 1