Why does my state persist on screen change? - react-native

I am developing a React Native app and I am currently using a component in 2 different places of my app. I navigate from one place to another using a Drawer Navigator (React Navigation v6). This component updates a state when receiving a response from an API. However, if I switch to the other place where this component gets rendered, the state remains (therefore the visual message from the API appears inside it).
Why does this happen? Shouldn't all states reset on unmount and get the initial value (the one passed to useState()) when the component gets mounted again? This not the behavior I want and from what I know, this was not supposed to happen.
What can I do to make my state not persist on screen change? I have implemented the code below to be executed when a menu screen is selected, but has no effect on this issue:
navigation.dispatch(
CommonActions.reset({
index: 0,
key: null,
routes: [{ name: targetScreen }]
})

This behavior in react-native differs from react. This is documented here.
If you are coming to react-navigation from a web background, you may assume that when user navigates from route A to route B, A will unmount (its componentWillUnmount is called) and A will mount again when user comes back to it. While these React lifecycle methods are still valid and are used in react-navigation, their usage differs from the web.
Consider a screen A and a screen B. Suppose we navigate from A to B.
When going back from B to A, componentWillUnmount of B is called, but componentDidMount of A is not because A remained mounted the whole time.
This is valid for all navigators in react-native-navigation. Thus, if we have a tab bar navigation with 5 tabs, and each tab nests a Stack, then we could navigate on one stack to a certain depth, then switch the tab, and then switch the tab back again, and all screens visited will remain mounted.
Edit: In response to the comments. The recommended standard pattern to resolve your issue is as follows.
// some state in my component
const [state, setState] = useState()
useFocusEffect(
React.useCallback(() => {
// set state to initial value
setState()
}, [])
);
This is described here.

Your component does not unmount when you navigate out of component. Consider manually reseting your state inside this hook useFocusEffect

Related

React Navigation error: not handled by any navigator

I realize why this occurring but am trying to figure out the best way to go about getting the required behavior:
Let's say I have a tab navigator and inside those tabs I have stack navigators. When I first open the app I am in the Home tab. Now let's say a push notification comes in and I handle that and say go to this screen in the profile stack navigator. The screen is not usually the first screen in the navigator but because I have not navigated to the profile screen via the tab navigator the initial screen is not loaded so it's the first in the stack. If I call navigation.pop it will not be handled by a navigator because their is no screen to go back to in the profile navigator.
I figured I could just call navigation.navigate('Profile') and it does navigate to that screen but it doesn't pop the initial screen so clicking the tab by default will now make the first screen the base screen until the app is restarted.
If I call navigation.goBack() I won't run into the above problem but I won't be able to always ensure that the 'Profile' screen is the place it goes back to.
Ideally I'd like some way to say push this screen into this stack and then push this screen. So when pop is called it will always show that users profile screen.
** EDIT **
After looking through some docs I found that I can do the following:
navData.dispatch(() => {
navData.navigate('Home', {
screen: 'ProfileScreen',
});
navData.navigate('Home', {
screen: 'ProfileScreen',
params: {
screen: 'ViewPostScreen',
params: { shouldPlay: true },
},
});
});
Though I get the following warning: Possible unhandled Promise rejection: TypeError: undefined is not an object 'action.target'
I'm also using this logic in another location of my app with a different screen and works in development but not in production. Looking for suggestions on to best handle the above situation.

React Navigation v4 lifecycle events do not fire when navigating to the same screen

Let's say I have a ProductScreen component that renders info about a product as well as a list of other similar products. When clicking on a similar product, a navigation is done from ProductScreen ==> ProductScreen with different params/key.
The problem I'm facing is that I want to do something on the React Navigation focus event (for example, scroll to top)
navigation.addListener('didFocus', () => {
console.log('didFocus')
scrollToTop()
})
I see the log the first time the component renders, but when doing a navigation from ProductScreen ==> ProductScreen, the didFocus event doesn't seem to be firing again so the component isn't scrolled to the top. In fact, none of the lifecycle events (willFocus, didFocus, willBlur, didBlur) seem to be firing.
Is there any way to be able to use react navigation lifecycle events when navigating from component X to component X with different params? Thanks!
You're navigating to the same screen so it's normal that didFocus doesn't fire, since the screen was already focused.
If you want to react to params change, you can use componentDidUpdate/useEffect to compare previous params with the new params and do what you need to do.
If you want to navigate to a new screen, you can use push instead of navigate

React-native componentWillMount not calling

I am new in react-native I have two screens in my stack. Login and Home.
I want to go back to login from a button on home.
I am writing this code
this.props.navigation.navigate('loginScreen')
but in login screen componentWillMount method is not calling. I want to reset my form when user come on login screen from home.
Can anyone help me here?
Thanks in advance.
The this.props.navigation.navigate('loginScreen') don't work because you are now in loginScreen.
If you want to restart page this code isn't good. because have a loop!
correct code:
just when navigate to loginScreen from home use:
this.props.navigation.push('loginScreen')
NOT IN "componentWillMount"
To go back from login from home , you should use this.props.navigation.goBack() if the screen is immidiately before home.
Secondly, you should not use componentWillMount since it is deprecated and will be removed from React 17 onwards. Instead use componentDidMount
Since the component is already mounted therefore it won't call the react lifecycle events componentDidMount again. Therefore you should use the react-navigation listeners didFocus event.
didFocus: the screen focused (if there was a transition, the transition completed)
componentDidMount () {
this._onFocusListener = this.props.navigation.addListener('didFocus', (payload) => {
// Perform the reset action here
});
}
Since your Home and Login Screens are both under the same StackNavigator, when you go from Home back to Login the state stays the same as the component doesn't unmount. The recommended way to solve this is using the SwitchNavigator of react-navigation. Read this very helpful part of the documentation below
https://reactnavigation.org/docs/en/auth-flow.html
You may not be familiar with SwitchNavigator yet. The purpose of
SwitchNavigator is to only ever show one screen at a time. By default,
it does not handle back actions and it resets routes to their default
state when you switch away.
The perfect solution is with this.props.navigation.push('Login'), I tried with SwitchNavigator but it doesn't provide navigationOptions for header.

React Navigation - Reset Stack Router to initial route without knowing which route that is

I'm using React Navigation with a Tab Router that has multiple Stack Routers nested inside.
In one screen that can be accessed in any of the stack routers, I want to have an action that resets the stack router (in which the screen is) to the initial route of that stack router.
For example: If I'm on the Home stack router I want it to reset to the Home screen, if I'm on the Profile stack router I want it to reset to the Profile screen.
Is there any way to do this?
Note: I'm not integrating with redux, would redux integration make this easier?
I think the simplest way could be without redux passing the redirected screen - the initial screen of that stack- as a parameter in every navigate.
For example,
this.props.navigation.navigate('CommonScreen1', { initial: 'Home'});
this.props.navigation.navigate('CommonScreen2', { initial: 'Home'});
// in CommonScreen2 do the reset to the this.props.navigation.state.params.initial
this.props.navigation.navigate('CommonScreen1', { initial: 'Profile'});
this.props.navigation.navigate('CommonScreen2', { initial: 'Profile'});
// in CommonScreen2 do the reset to the this.props.navigation.state.params.initial

Accessing navigator in Actions with React-Native and Redux

Using React-Native (0.19) and Redux, I'm able to navigate from scene to scene in React Components like so:
this.props.navigator.push({
title: "Registrations",
component: RegistrationContainer
});
Additionally I'd like to be able push components to the navigator from anywhere in the app (reducers and/or actions).
Example Flow:
User fills out form and presses Submit
We dispatch the form data to an action
The action sets state that it has started to send data across the wire
The action fetches the data
When complete, action dispatches that the submission has ended
Action navigates to the new data recently created
Problems I'm seeing with my approach:
The navigator is in the props, not the state. In the reducer, I do not have access to the props
I need to pass navigator into any action that needs it.
I feel like I'm missing something slightly simple on how to access Navigator from actions without sending in as a parameter.
In my opinion the best way to handle the navigation with Redux is with react-native-router-flux, because it can delegate all the navigation logic to Redux:
You can change the route from the reducer;
You can connect the router to the store and dispatch its own actions that will inform the store about route changes (BEFORE_ROUTE, AFTER_ROUTE, AFTER_POP, BEFORE_POP, AFTER_DISMISS, BEFORE_DISMISS);
An example
Here is an example on how easily you can save the currently focused route in the store and handle it in a component (that will be aware of being focused):
1. Connect a <Route> to Redux
Connecting a <Route> to Redux is easy, instead of:
<Route name="register" component={RegisterScreen} title="Register" />
you might write:
<Route name="register" component={connect(selectFnForRegister)(RegisterScreen)} title="Register" />
You can also simply connect the component itself in its own file like you usually do.
2. Connect a <Router> to Redux
If you need to inform Redux of the navigation status (i.e. when you pop a route) just override the <Router> component included in react-native-router-flux with a connected one:
import ReactNativeRouter, { Actions, Router } from 'react-native-router-flux'
const Router = connect()(ReactNativeRouter.Router)
Now when you use a <Router> it will be connected to the store and will trigger the following actions:
Actions.BEFORE_ROUTE
Actions.AFTER_ROUTE
Actions.AFTER_POP
Actions.BEFORE_POP
Actions.AFTER_DISMISS
Actions.BEFORE_DISMISS
Take a look at this for an example.
3. Catch the interested actions in your reducer
For this example I have a global reducer (where I keep the information needed by all my app) where I set the currentRoute:
case Actions.AFTER_ROUTE:
case Actions.AFTER_POP:
return state.set('currentRoute', action.name)
Now the reducer will catch every route change and update global.currentRoute with the currently focused route.
You also can do many other interesting things from here, like saving an history of the navigation itself in an array!
4. Update your component on focus
I'm doing it on componentDidUpdate of my component of the route named payment.
If global.currentRoute is payment and the previous global.currentRoute was different, than the component has just been focused.
componentDidUpdate(prevProps) {
const prevRoute = prevProps.global.currentRoute
const currentRoute = this.props.global.currentRoute
if (currentRoute === 'payment' && prevRoute !== currentRoute) {
this.props.actions.doSomething()
}
}
P.S.: Remember to check currentRoute === 'payment', otherwise you'll start doSomething() on every route change!
Also, take a look a the README.md for learning other stuff about the integration with Redux.
Hope it helps, long live Redux!
Maybe you could pass the information about title and component in an action and the component with the navigator can then push the right scene with the information of the state.