Scroll to element on page load with React Hooks - reactjs

Question

I'm trying to create a functional component that fetches data from an API and renders it to a list. After the data is fetched and rendered I want to check if the URL id and list item is equal, if they are then the list item should be scrolled into view.
Below is my code:
import React, { Fragment, useState, useEffect, useRef } from "react";
export default function ListComponent(props) {
const scrollTarget = useRef();
const [items, setItems] = useState([]);
const [scrollTargetItemId, setScrollTargetItemId] = useState("");
useEffect(() => {
const fetchData = async () => {
let response = await fetch("someurl").then((res) => res.json());
setItems(response);
};
fetchData();
if (props.targetId) {
setScrollTargetItemId(props.targetId)
}
if (scrollTarget.current) {
window.scrollTo(0, scrollTarget.current.offsetTop)
}
}, [props]);
let itemsToRender = [];
itemsToRender = reports.map((report) => {
return (
<li
key={report._id}
ref={item._id === scrollTargetItemId ? scrollTarget : null}
>
{item.payload}
</li>
);
});
return (
<Fragment>
<ul>{itemsToRender}</ul>
</Fragment>
);
}
My problem here is that scrollTarget.current is always undefined. Please advice what I'm doing wrong. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Using useCallback, as #yagiro suggested, did the trick!
My code ended up like this:
const scroll = useCallback(node => {
if (node !== null) {
window.scrollTo({
top: node.getBoundingClientRect().top,
behavior: "smooth"
})
}
}, []);
And then I just conditionally set the ref={scroll} on the node that you want to scroll to.

Answer 2

That is because when a reference is changed, it does not cause a re-render.
From React's docs: 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.

Answer 3

constructor(props) {
thi.modal = React.createRef();
}
handleSwitch() {
// debugger
this.setState({ errors: [] }, function () {
this.modal.current.openModal('signup') // it will call function of child component of Modal
});
// debugger
}
return(
<>
<button className="login-button" onClick={this.handleSwitch}>Log in with email</button>
<Modal ref={this.modal} />
</>
)

Answer 4

React Hooks will delay the scrolling until the page is ready:
useEffect(() => {
const element = document.getElementById('id')
if (element)
element.scrollIntoView({ behavior: 'smooth' })
}, [])
If the element is dynamic and based on a variable, add them to the Effect hook:
const [variable, setVariable] = useState()
const id = 'id'
useEffect(() => {
const element = document.getElementById(id)
if (element)
element.scrollIntoView({ behavior: 'smooth' })
}, [variable])