React pass an event into child component - reactjs

I'm trying to find a way to pass event to child component in react.
I have something like that:
class ParentComponent extends Component<IProps, IState> {
render() {
return (
<div className={"ParentComponent"} onClick={this.onPageClick}>
... some navbar ...
... some `tabs` component
...
<ChildComponent/>
<AnotherChildComponent/>
...
... some footer ...
</div>
)
}
}
the child components are actually sub pages (changed using the tabs) with lot of logic and data inside them. (so I prefer manage them in separate components rather then one giant page).
some of the inner component have Editable labels which changed into an input (or in other case to a textarea or to MD editor) when the label is clicked.
there is an inner state in the child components when the user enter
into "Edit Mode" of the label. every component can have several of
this editable-labels.
The product request is when the user is clicking anywhere in the page the labels should exit from edit mode, so I need to capture the onClick on the master div like in the example and pass somehow the event into a function into the active child component so it will update it's inner state to exit edit-mode (if any).
Now, the solution I thought is to create a state variable in the parent which will be changed by the onPageClick function and pass into the child components
so they could update the local state. and then reset it on the parent again.
something like:
onPageClick() {
this.setState({ pageClicked: true }, () => {
this.setState({ pageClicked: false }
});
}
...
<ChildComponent pageClicked={this.state.pageClicked}/>
But it will change the parent state twice per click (and thus also the child state) even if not neccesary. the ideal why if I'll find a way to pass some event delegate to the children so a function will be triggered only inside the child when the parent onClick is triggered without any state changes in the parent.
Doe's it possible? do anyone have an idea how to implement something like that?

You are making your problem way more complicated than it needs to be.
You shouldn't listen for clicks on the outside component.
Instead, you should use your text input's onBlur event.
onBlur event is fired whenever a text input loses focus.

Related

How can I make sure a React parent component loads data before its child component mounts?

I'm writing a simple calendar application that uses a common layout to wrap different views of events (month view shows a larger calendar with all the days of the month and events for each day, week view just shows a vertical list of events for that week, etc.). The common layout includes a calendar picker control for selecting the date, and then a list of event categories that can be checked or unchecked to show events relating to sports, entertainment, etc.
When the layout mounts, I'm calling an async Redux action creator to get the list of event categories from the database. When those are retrieved, they're saved in a Redux store with a property of Selected set to true, since they're all selected at initial load.
async componentWillMount() {
await this.props.getEventTypes();
}
When the month view, which is a child of the layout view, mounts, it's grabbing all the events for the given month. Part of the selection process of getting those events is sending the list of selected event categories to the backend so it only gets events from the selected categories.
async componentWillMount() {
await this.props.getWeeks();
}
The problem is, the selected categories list is always empty when the month view goes to grab the events for the month. So it's not going to select anything since no categories are selected.
It seems the only way this can be happening is if the child component is mounting first, or if the parent component is taking so long to get the event categories that the getWeeks process finishes first (this is unlikely as the process to grab the weeks and days and their events is much more involved than just selecting the event category list).
So, how can I make sure the parent component grabs the event categories from the database and puts them in the Redux store before the child component selects its events?
I know one way, probably the best way, to do this would be to have the list of event categories render into the page on the server side, so it's just already present at initial load. I'll probably end up doing it that way, but I'd also like to know how to do it all through client-side actions, in case I need to do it that way for some reason in the future.
You can try like this
Set isDataLoaded when data is available.
Use ternary operator for conditional rendering.
In you render
return(
<>
....
{ isDataLoaded ? <ChildComponent /> : null }
....other sutff
</>
);
Use can also use the && operator
return(
<>
....
{ isDataLoaded && <ChildComponent /> }
....other sutff
</>
);
You can integrate componentDidUpdate() and use it to render your child-components in a somewhat synchronous flow.
Let's say the structure of your Parent Component should look something like the following:
Parent
class Parent extends React.Component{
state = {
renderChildren: false
}
async componentDidMount() {
await this.props.getEventTypes();
}
componentDidUpdate(prevProps){
if(this.props.yourUpdatedReducer !== prevProps.yourUpdatedReducer){
this.setState({
renderChildren: true
})
}
}
render(){
const { renderChildren } = this.state
return(
{ renderChildren ? <Child/> : "Loading" }
)
}
}
You want a key in your state that determines whether you should
render the Child component.
In componentDidMount(), you call the action-creator function, when
it completes, you get updated props.
With updated props, you trigger componentDidUpdate(), where you
check the values in your reducer. If the values are
different that means you got the updated data from your database, so
everything has loaded.
Great, so now you want to mount your Child component, so you
update-state, setting renderChildren to true, thus re-rendering the
Parent component. Now Child gets rendered and should behave as expected.

How do I call an event handler or method in a child component from a parent?

I'm trying to implement something similar to the Floating Action Button (FAB) in the Material-UI docs:
https://material-ui.com/demos/buttons/#floating-action-buttons
They have something like:
<SwipeableViews>
<TabContainer dir={theme.direction}>Item One</TabContainer>
<TabContainer dir={theme.direction}>Item Two</TabContainer>
<TabContainer dir={theme.direction}>Item Three</TabContainer>
</SwipeableViews>
{
fabs.map((fab, index) => (
<Zoom>
<Fab>{fab.icon}</Fab>
</Zoom>
));
}
I have something like:
<SwipeableViews>
<TabContainer dir={theme.direction}>
<ListOfThingsComponent />
</TabContainer>
<TabContainer dir={theme.direction}>Item Two</TabContainer>
<TabContainer dir={theme.direction}>Item Three</TabContainer>
</SwipeableViews>
{
fabs.map((fab, index) => (
<Zoom>
<Fab onClick={ListOfThingsComponent.Add???}>
Add Item to List Component
</Fab>
</Zoom>
));
}
My ListOfThingsComponent originally had an Add button and it worked great. But I wanted to follow the FAB approach for it like they had in the docs. In order to do this, the Add button would then reside outside of the child component. So how do I get a button from the parent to call the Add method of the child component?
I'm not sure how to actually implement the Add Item to List click event handler given that my list component is inside the tab, while the FAB is outside the whole tab structure.
As far as I know I can either:
find a way to connect parent/child to pass the event handler through the levels (e.g. How to pass an event handler to a child component in React)
find a way to better compose components/hierarchy to put the responsibility at the right level (e.g. remove the component and put it in the same file with this in scope using function components?)
I've seen people use ref but that just feels hacky. I'd like to know how it should be done in React. It would be nice if the example went just a bit further and showed where the event handling should reside for the FABs.
thanks in advance, as always, I'll post what I end up doing
It depends on what you expect the clicks to do. Will they only change the state of the given item or will they perform changes outside of that hierarchy? Will a fab be present in every single Tab or you're not sure?
I would think in most cases you're better off doing what you were doing before. Write a CustomComponent for each Tab and have it handle the FAB by itself. The only case in which this could be a bad approach is if you know beforehand that the FAB's callback will make changes up and out of the CustomComponent hierarchy, because in that case you may end up with a callback mess in the long run (still, nothing that global state management couldn't fix).
Edit after your edit: Having a button call a function that is inside a child component is arguably impossible to do in React (without resorting to Refs or other mechanisms that avoid React entirely) because of its one-way data flow. That function has to be somewhere in common, in this case in the component that mounts the button and the ListOfThings component. The button would call that method which would change the state in the "Parent" component, and the new state gets passed to the ListOfThings component via props:
export default class Parent extends Component {
state = {
list: []
};
clickHandler = () => {
// Update state however you need
this.setState({
list: [...this.state.list, 'newItem']
});
}
render() {
return (
<div>
<SwipeableViews>
<TabContainer dir={theme.direction}>
<ListOfThingsComponent list={this.state.list /* Passing the state as prop */}/>
</TabContainer>
<TabContainer dir={theme.direction}>Item Two</TabContainer>
<TabContainer dir={theme.direction}>Item Three</TabContainer>
</SwipeableViews>
{
fabs.map((fab, index) => (
<Zoom>
<Fab onClick={this.clickHandler /* Passing the click callback */}>
Add Item to List Component
</Fab>
</Zoom>
))
}
</div>
)
}
}
If you truly need your hierarchy to stay like that, you have to use this method or some form of global state management that the ListOfThingsComponent can read from.

Dynamically passing data to a child component in react

I have a react component that is responsible for listing out data and if the user clicks on a particular data item, it renders a popup with the data the user clicked passed to it. The popup is defined in a separate component but a single instance of the popup is defined in listing component as follows:
render(){
return(
...
{tasks.map((task, index) => {
return (
<p><a onClick={() => self.edit(task.id)}>{task.name}</a></p>
);
})}
<EditTaskPopup show={self.state.showEditPopup} onClose={self.onClosePopup} task={self.state.editData} />
...
)
}
The edit function, packages up the data and sets the component's state so that the data in included in the editData variable and the popup is shown as follows:
self.setState({showEditPopup: true, editData: tasks[x]});
This all works fine but my question is how I should correctly receive that data in the popup container, EditTaskPopup. The constructor of EditTaskPopup fire off when the parent component loads, so no user interaction has occurred, so no value is passed in. Same holds true for componentDidMount. I can see the correct value being passed in when the componentDidUpdate fires off, but that also fires off during the normal operation of the popup where I'm collecting information about what the user is typing within the popup and placing those values in state. Is there an event in a component that only fires off when a parent component changes the parameters passed into it but doesn't fire off when state changes within the component itself?
Try utilising lifecycle method: https://reactjs.org/docs/react-component.html#componentdidupdate

React conditional rendering not updating state in child component

I'm having a weird problem with conditional rendering in which state isn' going down into a child component. I have a viewer template, with a PDF viewer component and a Web viewer component (using an iframe). Depending on what comes back from the server as a media_type value, the appropriate component gets rendered. That's all working fine.
Externally, I have a sibling component responsible for searching inside the content, and in order to do so, it has to pass the search query up to the parent component, which then updates the parent state and then gets passed to the child as a prop. The reason for this is different content requires different search implementation, which is implemented inside the viewer component.
Apparently, my method of conditional rendering is breaking the search query prop update in the child component. None of the component update methods are being called when the prop changes, and therefore the search execution never gets called.
The sibling component calls this method in the common parent:
/**
* Search query execution handler. Passes the state as a prop to the catalog for search
* execution
* #param e Keyword or query string from SearchPanel
*/
searchQueryHandler(e) {
this.setState({
searchRequest: e
});
}
Parent component render method
render() {
let viewer = <div />;
if (this.state.link.media_type === 1)
viewer = <PDF file={this.state.link.id}
setOverlayVisibility={this.props.setOverlayVisibility}
searchQuery = {this.state.searchRequest}
searchMatchHandler={this.searchMatchHandler}
searchResultSelection={this.state.searchResultSelection}
/>;
else if (this.state.link.media_type !== '')
viewer = <WebViewer link={this.state.link}
setOverlayVisibility={this.props.setOverlayVisibility}
searchQuery={this.state.searchRequest}
/>;
return (
<Content>
<ContentLeft>
{viewer}
</ContentLeft>
<ContentRight>
<SidePanel institution={this.state.institution}
link={this.state.link}
searchQueryHandler={this.searchQueryHandler}
searchResults={this.state.searchResults}
searchResultClickHandler={this.searchResultClickHandler}
/>
</ContentRight>
</Content>
)
}
Now, the searchQueryHandler method is being hit by the event fired off in SidePanel, but none of componentWillReceiveProps, shouldComponentUpdate, willComponentUpdate are called inside PDF or WebViewer. I suspect this has to do with the if/else block inside render, but not sure how else to implement this.
The answer to this was the parent component was blocked from updating by a shouldComponentUpdate implementation that did not take into account the new state of the search query. As such, it was returning false all the time, and thus blocking propagation of state update to the appropriate child component.
shouldComponentUpdate(nextProps, nextState) {
return this.state.link !== nextProps.link || this.state.searchRequest !== nextState.searchRequest;
}
was the fix.
So simple, and yet so frustrating.

ReactJS: always transfer props to child component

I have a higher-order component that tracks the mouseover event of any composed component. It is roughly like this:
(Component) => class TrackMouseOver extends React.Component {
handleMouseOver = (e) => {
console.log('Mouse over!');
};
render() {
return <Component {...this.props} onMouseOver={this.handleMouseOver}/>;
}
};
However, this does not work very well since React components do not bind to DOM event themselves. Unless the component handle the onMouseOver prop, the HOC above won't work.
Without breaking the black-box nature of React components, is it better to always transfer props to child element? If yes, will there be significant performance impact by doing so?
If you start passing your handler function down, you will be going against the natural flow of events, as they bubble up through the DOM.
Instead, wrap your component in a handling element with a listener and make use of event bubbling.
(Component) => class TrackMouseOver extends React.Component {
handleMouseOver(e) {
e.target // is the element that triggered the event
e.currentTarget // is the element this handler is attached to
}
render() {
return (
<div onMouseOver={this.handleMouseOver}>
<Component {...this.props} />
</div>
);
}
};
When you click on one of the elements inside the new div, the event has a two part lifecycle.
Capturing
The browser works out which top level element the event happened to, then which child of that element and so on until the event finally ends up at an element with no children — the target.
This sequence won't trigger any event listeners (unless they have the useCapture flag set), it just identifies the path of the event.
Bubbling
Now the event's target element has been reached, the event bubbles back up the captured path to the root of the DOM, triggering event listeners as it goes.
This is the reason that event handlers attached to the body element always trigger*, regardless of which element the event happens to. The body is a common ancestor for all elements.
In your case, you can utilise the fact that events for any elements inside your div will eventually bubble their way up to this event handler.
You can work out which element the event came from using the event.target.
* Event handlers won't trigger if an event handler on one of their descendant elements calls event.preventDefault or event.stopPropagation.

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