Reach custom hooks, when to use Reusability and Portability

React hooks have revolutionized the way we write functional components, enabling us to manage state and side effects efficiently. In addition to the built-in hooks provided by React, custom hooks offer a powerful way to encapsulate and reuse non-visual logic across multiple components. In this article, we’ll explore what custom hooks are, when to use them, and how to create our own custom hooks, adhering to the rules of hooks.

Understanding React Custom Hooks:

React custom hooks are JavaScript functions that utilize the existing hooks (or other custom hooks) to encapsulate and reuse specific logic in multiple components. These hooks allow us to separate concerns and extract common functionality into reusable units.

Benefits of Custom Hooks:

Using custom hooks brings several advantages to our React applications:

Reusability: Custom hooks enable us to reuse non-visual logic across multiple components. By abstracting away common functionality into a custom hook, we can easily share and apply that logic wherever needed, reducing code duplication.

Portability: Custom hooks can be extracted and shared across different projects. This makes it easier to maintain and update shared logic independently, improving the overall development process.

Clean and Modular Code: Custom hooks promote clean and modular code architecture by encapsulating specific logic in a single hook. This improves code readability and maintainability.

Composition: Custom hooks can be composed together, allowing for the creation of more complex hooks by combining simpler ones. This promotes code reuse and flexibility.

When to Use Custom Hooks:

Custom hooks are suitable for encapsulating any non-visual logic that needs to be reused across multiple components. Some common scenarios where custom hooks are useful include:

Data Fetching: If you have data fetching logic that needs to be reused across multiple components, such as making API requests or handling data caching, creating a custom hook can simplify and streamline this functionality.

Form Handling: If you have complex form validation or submission logic that is shared between different forms, a custom hook can encapsulate this logic and make it reusable.

Event Handling: If you have common event handling logic, such as debouncing or throttling event callbacks, a custom hook can abstract away this functionality and make it reusable across components.

Creating a Custom Hook:

To create a custom hook, we follow the same rules of hooks as we do with built-in hooks. The custom hook’s name should start with “use” to signify that it is a hook. Let’s create a simple custom hook to manage an input field’s value and its onChange handler:

import { useState } from 'react';

function useInput(initialValue = '') {
  const [value, setValue] = useState(initialValue);

  const handleChange = (event) => {
    setValue(event.target.value);
  };

  return {
    value,
    onChange: handleChange,
  };
}

In this example, the useInput hook encapsulates the state management and onChange handler logic for an input field. It utilizes the useState hook to create a state variable value and a setValue function to update it. The handleChange function updates the state when the input value changes. The hook returns an object with the current value and the onChange handler, which can be easily consumed by any component.

Using the Custom Hook:

We can now use the useInput hook in our components to manage input fields:

import React from 'react';
import useInput from './useInput';

function MyComponent() {
  const nameInput = useInput('');

  return (
    <div>
      <input
        type="text"
        value={nameInput.value}
        onChange={nameInput.onChange}
      />
      <p>Entered Name: {nameInput.value}</p>
    </div>
  );
}

In this example, we import and invoke the useInput hook, which returns an object with value and onChange properties. We then use these properties to manage the input field's value and update it as the user types.

React custom hooks provide a powerful way to encapsulate and reuse non-visual logic in multiple components. By creating custom hooks, we can improve code reusability, maintainability, and promote a modular code structure. Remember to adhere to the rules of hooks when creating custom hooks and use them for specific purposes, allowing for greater reusability and portability in our React applications.