React - UseEffect not re-rendering with new data? - reactjs

Question

This is my React Hook:
function Student(props){
const [open, setOpen] = useState(false);
const [tags, setTags] = useState([]);
useEffect(()=>{
let input = document.getElementById(tagBar);
input.addEventListener("keyup", function(event) {
if (event.keyCode === 13) {
event.preventDefault();
document.getElementById(tagButton).click();
}
});
},[tags])
const handleClick = () => {
setOpen(!open);
};
function addTag(){
let input = document.getElementById(tagBar);
let tagList = tags;
tagList.push(input.value);
console.log("tag");
console.log(tags);
console.log("taglist");
console.log(tagList);
setTags(tagList);
}
const tagDisplay = tags.map(t => {
return <p>{t}</p>;
})
return(
<div className="tags">
<div>
{tagDisplay}
</div>
<input type='text' id={tagBar} className="tagBar" placeholder="Add a Tag"/>
<button type="submit" id={tagButton} className="hiddenButton" onClick={addTag}></button>
<div>
);
What I am looking to do is be able to add a tag to these student elements (i have multiple but each are independent of each other) and for the added tag to show up in the tag section of my display. I also need this action to be triggerable by hitting enter on the input field.
For reasons I am not sure of, I have to put the enter binding inside useEffect (probably because the input element has not yet been rendered).
Right now when I hit enter with text in the input field, it properly updates the tags/tagList variable, seen through the console.logs however, even though I set tags to be the re-rendering condition in useEffect (and the fact that it is also 1 of my states), my page is not updating with the added tags

Answer 1

You are correct, the element doesn't exist on first render, which is why useEffect can be handy. As to why its not re-rendering, you are passing in tags as a dependency to check for re-render. The problem is, tags is an array, which means it compares the memory reference not the contents.
var myRay = [];
var anotherRay = myRay;
var isSame = myRay === anotherRay; // TRUE
myRay.push('new value');
var isStillSame = myRay === anotherRay; // TRUE
// setTags(sameTagListWithNewElementPushed)
// React says, no change detected, same memory reference, skip
Since your add tag method is pushing new elements into the same array reference, useEffect thinks its the same array and is not re-triggers. On top of that, React will only re-render when its props change, state changes, or a forced re-render is requested. In your case, you aren't changing state. Try this:
function addTag(){
let input = document.getElementById(tagBar);
let tagList = tags;
// Create a new array reference with the same contents
// plus the new input value added at the end
setTags([...tagList, input.value]);
}
If you don't want to use useEffect I believe you can also use useRef to get access to a node when its created. Or you can put the callback directly on the node itself with onKeyDown or onKeyPress

Answer 2

I can find few mistake in your code. First, you attaching event listeners by yourself which is not preferred in react. From the other side if you really need to add listener to DOM inside useEffect you should also clean after you, without that, another's listeners will be added when component re-rendered.
useEffect( () => {
const handleOnKeyDown = ( e ) => { /* code */ }
const element = document.getElementById("example")
element.addEventListener( "keydown", handleOnKeyDown )
return () => element.removeEventListener( "keydown", handleOnKeyDown ) // cleaning after effect
}, [tags])
Better way of handling events with React is by use Synthetic events and components props.
const handleOnKeyDown = event => {
/* code */
}
return (
<input onKeyDown={ handleOnKeyDown } />
)
Second thing is that each React component should have unique key. Without it, React may have trouble rendering the child list correctly and rendering all of them, which can have a bad performance impact with large lists or list items with many children. Be default this key isn't set when you use map so you should take care about this by yourself.
tags.map( (tag, index) => {
return <p key={index}>{tag}</p>;
})
Third, when you trying to add tag you again querying DOM without using react syntax. Also you updating your current state basing on previous version which can causing problems because setState is asynchronous function and sometimes can not update state immediately.
const addTag = newTag => {
setState( prevState => [ ...prevState, ...newTage ] ) // when you want to update state with previous version you should pass callback which always get correct version of state as parameter
}
I hope this review can help you with understanding React.
function Student(props) {
const [tags, setTags] = useState([]);
const [inputValue, setInputValue] = useState("");
const handleOnKeyDown = (e) => {
if (e.keyCode === 13) {
e.preventDefault();
addTag();
}
};
function addTag() {
setTags((prev) => [...prev, inputValue]);
setInputValue("");
}
return (
<div className="tags">
<div>
{tags.map((tag, index) => (
<p key={index}>{tag}</p>
))}
</div>
<input
type="text"
onKeyDown={handleOnKeyDown}
value={inputValue}
onChange={(e) => setInputValue(e.target.value)}
placeholder="Add a Tag"
/>
<button type="submit" onClick={addTag}>
ADD
</button>
</div>
);
}