I'm trying to use a websocket connection in a component class, but I need to declare it seperately from the function that opens it. Is there a way to declare universally or in state so that I can access the open websocket, so that I can close it before opening up another.

I have tried declaring at the top of the page with imports

const ws = new WebSocket("wss://ws-feed.pro.coinbase.com");

Also making it an attribute of the class:

lass App extends Component {
  constructor (props) {
    super(props);
    this.ws = new WebSocket("wss://ws-feed.pro.coinbase.com");
  this.state = {
  
  }
}

but it will always throw the error: 'ws' is not defined no-undef