How unmount a hook after going to new screen with navigate - react-native

Question

The context is a simple React Native app with React Navigation.
There are 3 screens.
The first simply displays a button to go to second screen using navigation.navigate("SecondScreen").
The Second contains a hook (see code below) that adds a listener to listen the mouse position. This hook adds the listener in a useEffect hook and removes the listener in the useEffect cleanup function. I just added a console.log in the listener function to see when the function is triggered.
This screen contains also a button to navigate to the Third screen, that only shows a text.
If I go from first screen to second screen: listener in hook start running. Good.
If I go back to the first screen using default react navigation 's back button in header. the listener stops. Good.
If I go again to second screen, then listener runs again. Good.
But if I now go from second screen to third screen, the listener is still running. Not Good.
How can I unmount the hook when going to third screen, and mount it again when going back to second screen?
Please read the following before answering :
I know that:
this is due to the fact that react navigation kills second screen when we go back to first screen, and then trigger the cleanup function returned by the useEffect in the hook. And that it doesn't kill second screen when we navigate to third screen, and then doesn't trigger the cleanup function.
the react navigation's hook useFocusEffect could be used to resolve this kind of problem. But it can't be used here because it will involve to replace the useEffect in the hook by the useFocusEffect. And I want my hook to be usable in every context, even if react navigation is not installed. More, I'm using here a custom hook for explanation, but it's the same problem for any hook (for example, the native useWindowDimensions).
Then does anyone know how I could manage this case to avoid to have the listener running on third screen ?
This is the code of the hook sample, that I take from https://github.com/rehooks/window-mouse-position/blob/master/index.js, but any hook could be used.
"use strict";
let { useState, useEffect } = require("react");
function useWindowMousePosition() {
let [WindowMousePosition, setWindowMousePosition] = useState({
x: null,
y: null
});
function handleMouseMove(e) {
console.log("handleMouseMove");
setWindowMousePosition({
x: e.pageX,
y: e.pageY
});
}
useEffect(() => {
window.addEventListener("mousemove", handleMouseMove);
return () => {
window.removeEventListener("mousemove", handleMouseMove);
};
}, []);
return WindowMousePosition;
}
module.exports = useWindowMousePosition;

Answer 1

the react navigation's hook useFocusEffect could be used to resolve this kind of problem. But it can't be used here because it will involve to replace the useEffect in the hook by the useFocusEffect. And I want my hook to be usable in every context, even if react navigation is not installed
So your hook somehow needs to know about the navigation state. If you can't use useFocusEffect, you'll need to pass the information about whether the screen is focused or not (e.g. with an enabled prop).
function useWindowMousePosition({ enabled = true } = {}) {
let [WindowMousePosition, setWindowMousePosition] = useState({
x: null,
y: null
});
useEffect(() => {
if (!enabled) {
return;
}
function handleMouseMove(e) {
console.log("handleMouseMove");
setWindowMousePosition({
x: e.pageX,
y: e.pageY
});
}
window.addEventListener("mousemove", handleMouseMove);
return () => {
window.removeEventListener("mousemove", handleMouseMove);
};
}, [enabled]);
return WindowMousePosition;
}
And then pass enabled based on screen focus:
const isFocused = useIsFocused();
const windowMousePosition = useWindowMousePosition({ enabled: isFocused });
Note that this approach will need the screen to re-render when it's blurred/focused unlike useFocusEffect.