Cancel Axios request in useEffect not running - reactjs

Question

I am attempting to cancel an axios request, but I am only having partial success. I have this function that returns a Promise when I make a GET request:
const getCards = (token) => {
const URL = isDev
? "https://cors-anywhere.herokuapp.com/https://privacy.com/api/v1/card"
: "https://privacy.com/api/v1/card";
const config = {
headers: {
Authorization: `Bearer ${token}`,
},
cancelToken: source.token,
};
return axios.get(URL, config);
};
I call this function inside updateCards() which looks like this:
const updateCards = async () => {
console.log("Updating Cards");
setCards([]);
setStarted(true);
setLoading(true);
let response = await getCards(token).catch((thrown) => {
if (axios.isCancel(thrown)) {
console.error("[UpdateCards]", thrown.message);
}
});
/**
* response is undefined when we cancel the request on unmount
*/
if (typeof response === "undefined") return console.log("Undefined");
console.log("Got Response from UpdateCards", response);
setLoading(false);
};
I cancel my request in the useEffect hook as so:
useEffect(() => {
return () => {
source.cancel()
}
}, [])
And I have setup my CancelToken under my state declaration like this:
const CancelToken = axios.CancelToken;
const source = CancelToken.source();
My issue is that, if I call my updateCards() function inside of the useEffect(), I can cancel it just fine, but if I use a button to call that same function the cancel is not ran. I have looked everywhere and the only solution I have found is that I have to call my requests within the useEffect() hook, but that is not something I want to do.Where do I go from here?
Here are the resources I have looked at:
https://github.com/axios/axios#cancellation
https://medium.com/#selvaganesh93/how-to-clean-up-subscriptions-in-react-components-using-abortcontroller-72335f19b6f7
Cant cancel Axios post request via CancelToken

Answer 1

To have a place to store a variable that behaves like an instance variable of the component, you can use useRef. It's a container for anything you want. You can store the CancelToken in there:
function Privacy(props) {
const source = useRef(null);
function getSource() {
if (source.current == null) {
const CancelToken = axios.CancelToken;
source.current = CancelToken.source();
}
return source.current;
}
useEffect(() => {
return () => {
if (source.current != null) source.current.cancel();
}
}, [])
// call `getSource()` wherever you need the Axios source
}