Referencing outdated state in React useEffect hook

Question

I want to save state to localStorage when a component is unmounted. This used to work in componentWillUnmount.

I tried to do the same with the useEffect hook, but it seems state is not correct in the return function of useEffect.

Why is that? How can I save state without using a class?

Here is a dummy example. When you press close, the result is always 0.

import React, { useState, useEffect } from "react";
import ReactDOM from "react-dom";

function Example() {
  const [tab, setTab] = useState(0);
  return (
    <div>
      {tab === 0 && <Content onClose={() => setTab(1)} />}
      {tab === 1 && <div>Why is count in console always 0 ?</div>}
    </div>
  );
}

function Content(props) {
  const [count, setCount] = useState(0);

  useEffect(() => {
    // TODO: Load state from localStorage on mount

    return () => {
      console.log("count:", count);
    };
  }, []);

  return (
    <div>
      <p>Day: {count}</p>
      <button onClick={() => setCount(count - 1)}>-1</button>
      <button onClick={() => setCount(count + 1)}>+1</button>
      <button onClick={() => props.onClose()}>close</button>
    </div>
  );
}

ReactDOM.render(<Example />, document.querySelector("#app"));

CodeSandbox

Answer 1

I tried to do the same with the useEffect hook, but it seems state is not correct in the return function of useEffect.

The reason for this is due to closures. A closure is a function's reference to the variables in its scope. Your useEffect callback is only ran once when the component mounts and hence the return callback is referencing the initial count value of 0.

The answers given here are what I would recommend. I would recommend @Jed Richard's answer of passing [count] to useEffect, which has the effect of writing to localStorage only when count changes. This is better than the approach of not passing anything at all writing on every update. Unless you are changing count extremely frequently (every few ms), you wouldn't see a performance issue and it's fine to write to localStorage whenever count changes.

useEffect(() => { ... }, [count]);

If you insist on only writing to localStorage on unmount, there's an ugly hack/solution you can use - refs. Basically you would create a variable that is present throughout the whole lifecycle of the component which you can reference from anywhere within it. However, you would have to manually sync your state with that value and it's extremely troublesome. Refs don't give you the closure issue mentioned above because refs is an object with a current field and multiple calls to useRef will return you the same object. As long as you mutate the .current value, your useEffect can always (only) read the most updated value.

CodeSandbox link

const {useState, useEffect, useRef} = React;

function Example() {
  const [tab, setTab] = useState(0);
  return (
    <div>
      {tab === 0 && <Content onClose={() => setTab(1)} />}
      {tab === 1 && <div>Count in console is not always 0</div>}
    </div>
  );
}

function Content(props) {
  const value = useRef(0);
  const [count, setCount] = useState(value.current);

  useEffect(() => {
    return () => {
      console.log('count:', value.current);
    };
  }, []);

  return (
    <div>
      <p>Day: {count}</p>
      <button
        onClick={() => {
          value.current -= 1;
          setCount(value.current);
        }}
      >
        -1
      </button>
      <button
        onClick={() => {
          value.current += 1;
          setCount(value.current);
        }}
      >
        +1
      </button>
      <button onClick={() => props.onClose()}>close</button>
    </div>
  );
}

ReactDOM.render(<Example />, document.querySelector('#app'));

<script src="https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/umd/react.development.js"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/[email protected]/umd/react-dom.development.js"></script>

<div id="app"></div>

Answer 2

This will work - using React's useRef - but its not pretty:

function Content(props) {
  const [count, setCount] = useState(0);
  const countRef = useRef();

  // set/update countRef just like a regular variable
  countRef.current = count;

  // this effect fires as per a true componentWillUnmount
  useEffect(() => () => {
    console.log("count:", countRef.current);
  }, []);
}

Note the slightly more bearable (in my opinion!) 'function that returns a function' code construct for useEffect.

The issue is that useEffect copies the props and state at composition time and so never re-evaluates them - which doesn't help this use case but then its not what useEffects are really for.

Thanks to @Xitang for the direct assignment to .current for the ref, no need for a useEffect here. sweet!