useEffect in child component pattern - reactjs

I have the following two components.
<Foo>
<Bars/>
<Foo>
When Foo is called the console shows:
call Bar useEffect
Warning: Cant perform a React state update on an unmounted component...
call Foo useEffect
call Bar useEffect again
Here's the codepen but it doesn't generate the same warning which could be because its in development mode on my local. It does show null prints though.
https://codepen.io/rsgmon/pen/OJmPGpa
Is this component structure, with useEffect in each component, not recommended/allowed?
If it's ok what do I need to change to avoid the warning?

This is likely occurring because a state update to Foo triggers a re-render, causing Bars to unmount and remount.
Then the original Bars API request completes and it attempts to update state on the component that isn't mounted anymore, hence the warning.
You can fix it by declaring a variable inside the effect that's initially false and setting it to true in the effect's cleanup function:
useEffect(() => {
let unmounted = false;
doSomeAsynchronousStuff()
.then( result => {
if (unmounted) {
return; // not mounted anymore. bail.
}
// do stuff with result
})
return () => unmounted = true; // cleanup gets called on un-mount
}, [])

Related

React why 'clearTimeout' not work on useeffect return callback

I have a question about using setTimeout, clearTimeout on React useEffect Hook.
useEffect(() => {
let timer = setTimeout(() => {
setRemainingSecond(remainingSecond - 1);
}, 1000);
return (() => {
clearTimeout(timer);
});
}, [remainingSecond]);
This is my react code with countdown component.
I understand why i should clear timerId everytime the component unmounts due to the memory leak and other sync problem.
But clearTimeout is meant to be used to cancel setTimeout callback function right?
and since useEffect return callback function will be called before component mounts, shouldn't timeout callback function be canceled and nothing happens?
the useEffect return callback will run each time the dependency array changes OR the before the component unmounts (NOT mounts).
In this instance, your timer will continue to go down by 1 every second, but if your component unmounted for some reason, it won't try and call setRemainingSecond once the 1000ms is up, preventing the infamous error:
Can only update a mounted or mounting component. This usually means you called setState() on an unmounted component. This is a no-op. Please check the code for the undefined component.

React: why is that changing the current value of ref from useRef doesn't trigger the useEffect here

I have a question about useRef: if I added ref.current into the dependency list of useEffect, and when I changed the value of ref.current, the callback inside of useEffect won't get triggered.
for example:
export default function App() {
const myRef = useRef(1);
useEffect(() => {
console.log("myRef current changed"); // this only gets triggered when the component mounts
}, [myRef.current]);
return (
<div className="App">
<button
onClick={() => {
myRef.current = myRef.current + 1;
console.log("myRef.current", myRef.current);
}}
>
change ref
</button>
</div>
);
}
Shouldn't it be when useRef.current changes, the stuff in useEffect gets run?
Also I know I can use useState here. This is not what I am asking. And also I know that ref stay referentially the same during re-renders so it doesn't change. But I am not doing something like
const myRef = useRef(1);
useEffect(() => {
//...
}, [myRef]);
I am putting the current value in the dep list so that should be changing.
I know I am a little late, but since you don't seem to have accepted any of the other answers I'd figure I'd give it a shot too, maybe this is the one that helps you.
Shouldn't it be when useRef.current changes, the stuff in useEffect gets run?
Short answer, no.
The only things that cause a re-render in React are the following:
A state change within the component (via the useState or useReducer hooks)
A prop change
A parent render (due to 1. 2. or 3.) if the component is not memoized or otherwise referentially the same (see this question and answer for more info on this rabbit hole)
Let's see what happens in the code example you shared:
export default function App() {
const myRef = useRef(1);
useEffect(() => {
console.log("myRef current changed"); // this only gets triggered when the component mounts
}, [myRef.current]);
return (
<div className="App">
<button
onClick={() => {
myRef.current = myRef.current + 1;
console.log("myRef.current", myRef.current);
}}
>
change ref
</button>
</div>
);
}
Initial render
myRef gets set to {current: 1}
The effect callback function gets registered
React elements get rendered
React flushes to the DOM (this is the part where you see the result on the screen)
The effect callback function gets executed, "myRef current changed" gets printed in the console
And that's it. None of the above 3 conditions is satisfied, so no more rerenders.
But what happens when you click the button? You run an effect. This effect changes the current value of the ref object, but does not trigger a change that would cause a rerender (any of either 1. 2. or 3.). You can think of refs as part of an "effect". They do not abide by the lifecycle of React components and they do not affect it either.
If the component was to rerender now (say, due to its parent rerendering), the following would happen:
Normal render
myRef gets set to {current: 1} - Set up of refs only happens on initial render, so the line const myRef = useRef(1); has no further effect.
The effect callback function gets registered
React elements get rendered
React flushes to the DOM if necessary
The previous effect's cleanup function gets executed (here there is none)
The effect callback function gets executed, "myRef current changed" gets printed in the console. If you had a console.log(myRef.current) inside the effect callback, you would now see that the printed value would be 2 (or however many times you have pressed the button between the initial render and this render)
All in all, the only way to trigger a re-render due to a ref change (with the ref being either a value or even a ref to a DOM element) is to use a ref callback (as suggested in this answer) and inside that callback store the ref value to a state provided by useState.
https://reactjs.org/docs/hooks-reference.html#useref
Keep in mind that useRef doesn’t notify you when its content changes. Mutating the .current property doesn’t cause a re-render. If you want to run some code when React attaches or detaches a ref to a DOM node, you may want to use a callback ref instead.
use useCallBack instead, here is the explanation from React docs:
We didn’t choose useRef in this example because an object ref doesn’t
notify us about changes to the current ref value. Using a callback ref
ensures that even if a child component displays the measured node
later (e.g. in response to a click), we still get notified about it in
the parent component and can update the measurements.
Note that we pass [] as a dependency array to useCallback. This
ensures that our ref callback doesn’t change between the re-renders,
and so React won’t call it unnecessarily.
function MeasureExample() {
const [height, setHeight] = useState(0);
const measuredRef = useCallback(node => {
if (node !== null) {
setHeight(node.getBoundingClientRect().height);
}
}, []);
return (
<>
<h1 ref={measuredRef}>Hello, world</h1>
<h2>The above header is {Math.round(height)}px tall</h2>
</>
);
}
Ok so I think what you're missing here is that changing a ref's value doesn't cause a re-render. So if it doesn't cause re-renders, then the function doesn't get run again. Which means useEffect isn't run again. Which means it never gets a chance to compare the values. If you trigger a re-render with a state change you will see that the effect will now get run. So try something like this:
export default function App() {
const [x, setX] = useState();
const myRef = useRef(1);
useEffect(() => {
console.log("myRef current changed"); // this only gets triggered when the component mounts
}, [myRef.current]);
return (
<button
onClick={() => {
myRef.current = myRef.current + 1;
// Update state too, to trigger a re-render
setX(Math.random());
console.log("myRef.current", myRef.current);
}}
>
change ref
</button>
);
}
Now you can see it will trigger the effect.

Save React Component scroll position in Redux on Component update

I have a React Component using a hook to save the scroll position of the component when the component unmounts. This works great but fails when navigating from one set of data to another set of data without the component unmounting.
For instance, imagine the Slack Interface where there is a sidebar of message channels on the left and on the right is a list of messages (messageList). If you were to navigate between two channels, the messageList component would update with a new set of data for the messageList, but the component was never unmounted so scroll position never gets saved.
I came up with a solution that works, but also throws a warning.
My current useEffect hook for the component (stripped down) and the code that currently saves scroll position whenever the messageList ID changes:
// Component...
const usePrevious = (value) => {
const ref = useRef();
useEffect(() => {
ref.current = value;
});
return ref.current;
};
// Save scroll position when Component unmounts
useEffect(() => {
return () => {
setScrollOffset(parent._id, scrollPos.current);
};
}, []);
// Save scroll position when Parent ID changes
const oldParent = usePrevious(parent);
if (oldParent && parent._id !== oldParent._id) {
setScrollOffset(oldParent._id, list ? list.scrollTop : 0);
}
// ...Component
The error this throws is:
Warning: Cannot update a component from inside the function body of a different component.
And the line that is causing it is the setScrollOffset call inside of the last if block. I'm assuming that while this works it is not the way that I should be handling this sort of thing. What is a better way to handle saving scroll position when a specific prop on the component changes?
Add parent._id to the dependency array. Refactor your code to still cache the previous parent id, add that to the dependency, and move the conditional test inside the effect.
Cleaning up an effect
The clean-up function runs before the component is removed from the UI
to prevent memory leaks. Additionally, if a component renders multiple
times (as they typically do), the previous effect is cleaned up before
executing the next effect.
// Return previous parent id and cache current
const oldParent = usePrevious(parent);
// Save scroll position when Component unmounts or parent id changes
useEffect(() => {
if (oldParent && parent._id !== oldParent._id) {
setScrollOffset(oldParent._id, list ? list.scrollTop : 0);
}
return () => {
setScrollOffset(parent._id, scrollPos.current);
};
}, [parent._id, oldParent]);
If this does't quite fit the bill, then use two effects, one for the mount/unmount and the other for just updates on the parent id.
Thanks to the suggestions of #drew-reese, he got me pointed down the right path. After adopting his solution (which previously I could not get working properly), I was able to isolate my problem to usage with react-router. (connected-react-router in my case). The issue was that the component was rendering and firing the onScroll event handler and overwriting my scroll position before I could read it.
For me the solution ended up being to keep my existing useEffect hook but pull the scroll offset save out of it and into useLayoutEffect (Had to keep useEffect since there is other stuff in useEffect that I removed for the sake of keeping the sample code above lean). useLayoutEffect allowed me to read the current scroll position before the component fired the onScroll event which was ultimately overwriting my saved scroll position reference to 0.
This actually made my code much cleaner overall by removing the need for my usePrevious hook entirely. My useLayoutEffect hook now looks like this:
useLayoutEffect(() => {
return () => {
setScrollOffset(parent._id, scrollPos.current);
};
}, [parent._id]);

Can't perform a React State update on unMounted child component?

Am getting this warning:
Can't perform a React state update on unmounted component. This is a no-op...
It results from a child component and I can't figure out how to make it go away.
Please note that I have read many other posts about why this happens, and understand the basic issue. However, most solutions suggest cancelling subscriptions in a componentWillUnmount style function (I'm using react hooks)
I don't know if this points to some larger fundamental misunderstanding I have of React,but here is essentially what i have:
import React, { useEffect, useRef } from 'react';
import Picker from 'emoji-picker-react';
const MyTextarea = (props) => {
const onClick = (event, emojiObject) => {
//do stuff...
}
const isMountedRef = useRef(true);
useEffect(() => {
isMountedRef.current = true;
});
useEffect(() => {
return () => {
console.log('will unmount');
isMountedRef.current = false;
}
});
return (
<div>
<textarea></textarea>
{ isMountedRef.current ? (
<Picker onEmojiClick={onClick}/>
):null
}
</div>
);
};
export default MyTextarea;
(tl;dr) Please note:
MyTextarea component has a parent component which is only rendered on a certain route.
Theres also a Menu component that once clicked, changes the route and depending on the situation will either show MyTextarea's parent component or show another component.
This warning happens once I click the Menu to switch off MyTextarea's parent component.
More Context
Other answers on StackOverflow suggest making changes to prevent state updates when a component isn't mounted. In my situation, I cannot do that because I didn't design the Picker component (rendered by MyTextarea). The Warning originates from this <Picker onEmojiClick={onClick}> line but I wouldn't want to modify this off-the-shelf component.
That's explains my attempt to either render the component or not based on the isMountedRef. However this doesn't work either. What happens is the component is either rendered if i set useRef(true), or it's never rendered at all if i set useRef(null) as many have suggested.
I'm not exactly sure what your problem actually is (is it that you can't get rid of the warning or that the <Picker> is either always rendering or never is), but I'll try to address all the problems I see.
Firstly, you shouldn't need to conditionally render the <Picker> depending on whether MyTextArea is mounted or not. Since components only render after mounting, the <Picker> will never render if the component it's in hasn't mounted.
That being said, if you still want to keep track of when the component is mounted, I'd suggest not using hooks, and using componentDidMount and componentWillUnmount with setState() instead. Not only will this make it easier to understand your component's lifecycle, but there are also some problems with the way you're using hooks.
Right now, your useRef(true) will set isMountedRef.current to true when the component is initialized, so it will be true even before its mounted. useRef() is not the same as componentDidMount().
Using 'useEffect()' to switch isMountedRef.current to true when the component is mounted won't work either. While it will fire when the component is mounted, useEffect() is for side effects, not state updates, so it doesn't trigger a re-render, which is why the component never renders when you set useRef(null).
Also, your useEffect() hook will fire every time your component updates, not just when it mounts, and your clean up function (the function being returned) will also fire on every update, not just when it unmounts. So on every update, isMountedRef.current will switch from true to false and back to true. However, none of this matters because the component won't re-render anyways (as explained above).
If you really do need to use useEffect() then you should combine it into one function and use it to update state so that it triggers a re-render:
const [isMounted, setIsMounted] = useState(false); // Create state variables
useEffect(() => {
setIsMounted(true); // The effect and clean up are in one function
return () => {
console.log('will unmount');
setIsMounted(false);
}
}, [] // This prevents firing on every update, w/o it you'll get an infinite loop
);
Lastly, from the code you shared, your component couldn't be causing the warning because there are no state updates anywhere in your code. You should check the picker's repo for issues.
Edit: Seems the warning is caused by your Picker package and there's already an issue for it https://github.com/ealush/emoji-picker-react/issues/142

React componentDidMount() is fired on unMounted component

A simple react component that invokes a promise from the data store on componentDidMount is throwing a warning:
Warning: setState(...): Can only update a mounted or mounting component. This usually means you called setState() on an unmounted component. This is a no-op. Please check the code for the LocationNameView component.
I threw a few debug console.log to see if this.isMounted() is true/false, and inside componentDidMount this.isMounted() will return false the first time then again and it will be true. I'm not sure if the docs are clear or the name of componentDidMount is skewing my reasoning here but it seems like this method should only be invoked if the component is actually mounted.
enter link description here
componentDidMount: function() {
var self = this;
// make the request to the backend and replace the loading location text
Models.Location.find(this.props.location)
.then(function(location) {
console.log(self.isMounted()); // <--- shows false then true
self.setState({ location : location });
});
},
componentDidMount is invoked when the underlying DOM representation is built, but, not yet mounted to the actual DOM.
The reason the warning is being displayed about setting state on an unMounted component is because the aSync callback in the above example can return before the component is actually mounted to the DOM tree in the client/browser.
The lesson here is if you're using an aSync callback that sets state in your component on componentWillMount or componentDidMount, first use the safety catch isMounted() before proceeding to setting state, ie:
componentDidMount() {
let self = this;
PromiseMethod().then(function aSyncCallback(data) {
if ( self.isMounted() ) {
self.setState({...data});
}
});
}
React Component Lifecycle reference

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