useState() is an example built-in React hook that lets you use states in your functional components. This was not possible before React 16.7.

In the previous tutorial we learned about React Hooks and what problems they solve. Let's now see by example how to use the useState() built-in hook to allow component functions to have local state.

In the previous tutorial, we've cloned our React/Axios/Django project and installed the project's dependencies including React 16.7 alpha which provides support for React Hooks.

Our front-end application has two React components:

• CustomerCreateUpdate: for creating and updating customers,
• CustomersList: for listing customers

The API requests sent with Axios are encapsulated in the CustomersService.js class.

The two components uses component classes.

Before diving into practice, let's see some theory about the useState() hook.

Why Using useState?

Before React 16.7, if you are using functional components in your app then suddenly you have a requirement to add a bunch of state to your function; you have only one solution which is to convert your function to a class that extends React.Component then you'll use this.state to add initial state and setState() to update it.

Now with the latest version of React, you can still use functional components and take benefits of all features like state and life-cycle methods using hooks.

In this tutorial, we'll be looking mainly on the useState() hook.

Please note that Hooks are currently in alpha version so they are not yet ready for production. This also means the API may change.

What Does useState Exactly Do?

The useState function is a built in hook that can be imported from the react package. It allows you to add state to your functional components. Using the useState hook inside a function component, you can create a piece of state without switching to class components.

There some differences between handling state in functions vs classes:

• In class components, the state is an object accessed using this.state; You simply add properties on this object to add an initial state and then use setState() to change it later.
• In function components and using useState; the state is not necessarily an object. It can be an array, a number, a boolean or a string, etc. You can make multiple calls to useState in order to create a single piece of state with an initial value but also the function that's used to change that state later.

Understanding useState by Example

Now, let's see an example of useState to create a stateful function component.

This a truncated example of the CustomerCreateUpdate component:

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import CustomersService from './CustomersService';
const customersService = new CustomersService();

class CustomerCreateUpdate extends Component {
    constructor(props) {
        super(props);
    }
    componentDidMount(){}
    handleCreate(){
        customersService.createCustomer(
          {
            "first_name": this.refs.firstName.value,
            "last_name": this.refs.lastName.value,
            "email": this.refs.email.value,
            "phone": this.refs.phone.value,
            "address": this.refs.address.value,
            "description": this.refs.description.value
        }          
        )
    }
    handleUpdate(pk){}
    handleSubmit(event) {}
    render() {}
}
export default CustomerCreateUpdate;

This component extends React.Component. This allows the component to use the componentDidMount life-cycle event and this.refs for accessing the form fields. We'll see in the next part, how to access these features from a function component using hooks like useEffect() and useRef().

This is an a truncated example of the CustomersList component which is available from this file:

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import CustomersService from './CustomersService';

const customersService = new CustomersService();

class CustomersList extends Component {

  constructor(props) {
    super(props);

    this.state = {
      customers: [],
      nextPageURL: ''

    };
    /*...*/

  }  
  componentDidMount() {
    var self = this;
    customersService.getCustomers().then(function (result){

      self.setState({ customers: result.data, nextPageURL: result.nextlink})
    });
  }

  handleDelete(e,pk){    
  }

  nextPage(){    
  }

  render() {
    return (
      <div className="customers--list">
          <table className="table">
          <-- Truncated -->

            <tbody>
            {this.state.customers.map( c =>

              <tr key={c.pk}>
              <!-- Truncated -->
              </tr>)}
              </tbody>
          </table>

      </div>
    );
  }
}

export default CustomersList;

This component extends React.Component and use the this.state object to maintain the state which contains the customers array and the nextPageURL string which stores the link to the next page of data to fetch from the Django API. We also use the setState() method to update the state once we get data from the server using the customersService.getCustomers() method.

In the render() method we loop through the this.state.customers array and display our table rows.

Now we want to convert this class component to a function component and be able to maintain state in our function just like the example on top.

import React, { useState } from 'react';

import CustomersService from './CustomersService';

const customersService = new CustomersService();

function CustomersList(props){

  const [customers, setCustomers] = useState([]);
  const [nextPageURL, setNextPageURL] = useState('');

    function handleDelete(e, pk){}
    function nextPage(){}

    return (
      <div className="customers--list">
          <table className="table">
          <thead key="thead">
          <tr>
            <!-- Truncated --> 
          </tr>
          </thead>

            <tbody>
            {customers.map( c =>

              <tr key={c.pk}>
                <!-- Truncated -->
              </tr>)}
              </tbody>
          </table>  
          <button className="btn btn-primary" onClick= { nextPage }>Next</button>

      </div>
    );
}

The useState hook returns an array with 2 elements. We use using array destructuring to assign names to the two elements. The first element is the initial value of the state, and the second element is a function to set the state; which you can call with a new value to set the related state.

Next, on the componentDidMount life-cycle method which is fired when the component is mounted on the DOM we sent a request to the server, we subscribe to the Observable and then we call the setState method

this.setState({ customers: result.data, nextPageURL: result.nextlink})

We can achieve this same behavior using the useEffect() hook, setCustomers() and setNextPageURL() functions that we get from the useState() hook.

useEffect() is a built in React hook that's used to run side effects and it's equivalent to three life-cycle methods componentDidMount, componentDidUpdate and componentWillUnmount. We'll see more about this hook in a separate tutorial.

Just below the useState() hook in your component function, add the following code:

useEffect(() => {
    customersService.getCustomers().then(function (result) {
        setCustomers(result.data);
        setNextPageURL(result.nextlink);  
    });
});

Finally, just add the implementations for handleDelete() and nextPage() in your CustomersList function component:

    function handleDelete(e, pk){
       customersService.deleteCustomer({pk : pk}).then(()=>{
         var newArr = customers.filter(function(obj) {
           return obj.pk !== pk;
         });
         setCustomers(newArr);
       });
    }
    function nextPage(){

      customersService.getCustomersByURL(this.state.nextPageURL).then((result) => {
         setCustomers(result.data); 
         setNextPageURL(result.nextlink);
      });      
    }

Again, we simply use the setCustomers() and setNextPageURL() functions returned from destructuring the array returned by the useState() hook.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we've seen by example how to use useState hook to create state inside functional components in React.

In the next tutorial, we'll see another important built-in hook which useEffect that can be used to run side effects in your function components.

Note: We also publish our tutorials on Medium and DEV.to. If you prefer reading in these platforms, you can follow us there to get our newest articles.

About the author

Ahmed Bouchefra is a web developer with 5+ years of experience and technical author with an engineering degree on software development. You can hire him with a click on the link above or contact him via his LinkedIn account. He authored technical content for the industry-leading websites such as SitePoint, Smashing, DigitalOcean, RealPython, freeCodeCamp, JScrambler, Pusher, and Auth0. He also co-authored various books about modern web development that you can find from Amazon or Leanpub

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