React - random notes

fetching data

• useEffect() to kick off the data fetching only once on load
• the cleanup function, aka ignore:boolean, to avoid getting a race condition. In case user navigates back and forth and sends multiple fetch requests before the 1 comes back

function SearchResults({ query }) {
  const [results, setResults] = useState([]);
  const [page, setPage] = useState(1);
  useEffect(() => {
    let ignore = false;
    fetchResults(query, page).then(json => {
      if (!ignore) {
        setResults(json);
      }
    });
    return () => {
      ignore = true;
    };
  }, [query, page]);

  function handleNextPageClick() {
    setPage(page + 1);
  }
  // ...
}

• even better, the above rewritten with a custom Hook, avoiding the use of the useEffect alltogether:

function SearchResults({ query }) {
  const [page, setPage] = useState(1);
  const params = new URLSearchParams({ query, page });
  const results = useData(`/api/search?${params}`);

  function handleNextPageClick() {
    setPage(page + 1);
  }
  // ...
}

function useData(url) {
  const [data, setData] = useState(null);
  useEffect(() => {
    let ignore = false;
    fetch(url)
      .then(response => response.json())
      .then(json => {
        if (!ignore) {
          setData(json);
        }
      });
    return () => {
      ignore = true;
    };
  }, [url]);
  return data;
}