I am currently trying to teach myself react. I ran into this weird behavior and couldn't explain what was going on so I was hoping to get some answers.
In the below code snippet. I have a variable index that's initially set to 0. When I click the button, I expect handleClick() to update the value of index. However, it does not do it as I would expect.
const { useState } = React;
const Home = () => {
let names = ["Hello", "World"];
let index = 0;
const [name, setName] = useState(names[index]);
const handleClick = () => {
console.log(`Output: ${name}`);
console.log(`Index = ${index}`);
index = (index+1)%2;
setName(names[index]);
}
return (
<div className="Home">
<button onClick={handleClick}>Click</button>
</div>
);
}
ReactDOM.render(<Home />, document.body);<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react/17.0.2/umd/react.production.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react-dom/17.0.2/umd/react-dom.production.min.js"></script>I expect the console.log output to be as follows:
Output: Hello
Index = 0
Output: World
Index = 1
Output: Hello
Index = 0
Output: World
Index = 1
...
Instead, what I get is:
Output: Hello
Index = 0
Output: World
Index = 0
Output: World
Index = 1
Output: Hello
Index = 0
...
Can someone explain what is going on here?
When a state variable is updated using setState method, the component re-renders. In your code the index variable is not a state variable, so whenever the Home component re-renders the index variable will be inialized to 0.
You can change index to state variable or you can also use ref, if you what to persist its state accross re-renders.
You should consider moving the index to the state and moving names to props. The former will correct the behaviour of the component, as you're looking for, and the latter will make the component more re-usable.
const { useState } = React;
const Home = ({names}) => {
const [index, setIndex] = useState(0);
const name = names[index];
const handleClick = () => {
console.log(`Output: ${name}`);
console.log(`Index = ${index}`);
setIndex((index+1)%2);
}
return (
<div className="Home">
<button onClick={handleClick}>Click</button>
</div>
);
}
ReactDOM.render(<Home names={["Hello", "World"]} />, document.body);<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react/17.0.2/umd/react.production.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react-dom/17.0.2/umd/react-dom.production.min.js"></script>instead of just let index = 0
which is re-initialized to 0 every rerender when setName is run
you need something which is not re-initialized, as below
//on your imports
import {useRef} from 'react'
//inside you component
const index = useRef(0);
//on updating it
index.current = (index.current+1)%2