React native updates state "on its own" - react-native

Question

I have two screens, one list (Flatlist) and one filter screen where I want to be able to set some filters for the list. the list screen has the states "data" and "usedFilters". When I am switching to the filters screen, the states are set as navigation parameters for react navigation and then passed via navigation.navigate, together with the onChange function, as props to the filter screen. There they are read, and the filters screen class' state is set (usually with passed filters from the list screen, if no valid filters has been passed, some are initialized).
After that the filters can be changed. If that happens, the state of the filter screen gets updated.
If then the apply button is clicked the filter screens' state is passed to the onChange function and via that back to the list screen, the onChange function updates the state "usedFilters" state of the list screen. If the cancel button is pressed null is passed to the onChange function and there is no setState call.
Setting new states for the list screen works perfectly fine. the problem is, that when i press the cancel button (or the back button automatically rendered by react navigation) the changes are kept nevertheless. That only happens if the state has been changed before. So if there has never been applied a change and hence the "usedFitlers" state of the list screen is null, this behavior does not occur. Only if I already made some changes and hence the "usedFitlers" state of the list screen has a valid value which is passed to the filters screen the cancel or go back buttons won't work as expected.
I am using expo-cli 3 and tried on my android smartphone as well as the iOS simulator. Same behavior. I looked into it with chrome dev tools as well but i simply couldn't figure out where the "usedFitlers" state was updated.
I am using react native 0.60 and react navigation 3.11.0
My best guess is that for some reason the two states share the same memory or one is pointer to the other or sth like that. (Had problems like that with python some time ago, not knowing the it uses pointers when assigning variables).
Anyone got an idea?
List Screen:
export default class ListScreen extends React.Component {
state = { data: [], usedFilters: null };
static navigationOptions = ({ navigation }) => {
let data = navigation.getParam('data')
let changefilter = navigation.getParam('changeFilter')
let currfilter = navigation.getParam('currFilter')
return {
headerTitle:
<Text style={Styles.headerTitle}>{strings('List')}</Text>,
headerRight: (
<TouchableOpacity
onPress={() => navigation.navigate('FilterScreen', {
dataset: data, onChange: changefilter, activeFilters:
currfilter })} >
<View paddingRight={16}>
<Icon name="settings" size={24} color=
{Colors.headerTintColor} />
</View>
</TouchableOpacity>
),
};
};
_onChangeFilter = (newFilter) => {
if (newFilter) {
this.setState({ usedFilters: newFilter })
this.props.navigation.setParams({ currFilter: newFilter });
} // added for debugging reasons
else {
this.forceUpdate();
let a = this.state.usedFilters;
}
}
_fetchData() {
this.setState({ data: fakedata.results },
() => this.props.navigation.setParams({ data: fakedata.results,
changeFilter: this._onChangeFilter }));
}
componentDidMount() {
this._fetchData();
}
render() {
return (
<ScrollView>
<FlatList/>
// Just data rendering, no problems here
</ScrollView>
);
}
}
Filter Screen:
export default class FilterScreen extends React.Component {
static navigationOptions = () => {
return {
headerTitle: <Text style={Styles.headerTitle}> {strings('filter')}
</Text>
};
};
state = { currentFilters: null }
_onChange = (filter, idx) => {
let tmp = this.state.currentFilters;
tmp[idx] = filter;
this.setState({ currentFilters: tmp })
}
_initFilterElems() {
const filters = this.props.navigation.getParam('activeFilters');
const dataset = this.props.navigation.getParam('dataset');
let filterA = [];
let filterB = [];
let filterC = [];
if (filters) {
// so some checks
} else {
// init filters
}
const filterElements = [filterA, filterB, filterC];
this.setState({ currentFilters: filterElements })
}
componentDidMount() {
this._initFilterElems()
}
render() {
const onChange = this.props.navigation.getParam('onChange');
return (
<ScrollView style={Styles.screenView}>
<FlatList
data={this.state.currentFilters} // Listeneinträge
keyExtractor={(item, index) => 'key' + index}
renderItem={({ item, index }) => (
<FilterCategory filter={item} name={filterNames[index]}
idx={index} onChange={this._onChange} />
)}
ItemSeparatorComponent={() => <View style=
{Styles.listSeperator} />}
/>
<View style={Layout.twoHorizontalButtons}>
<TouchableOpacity onPress={() => {
onChange(this.state.currentFilters);
this.setState({ currentFilters: null });
this.props.navigation.goBack();
}}>
<View style={Styles.smallButton}>
<Text style={Styles.buttonText}>{strings('apply')} </Text>
</View>
</TouchableOpacity>
<TouchableOpacity onPress={() => {
onChange(null);
this.setState({ currentFilters: null });
this.props.navigation.goBack();
}}>
<View style={Styles.smallButton}>
<Text style={Styles.buttonText}>{strings('cancel')}
</Text>
</View>
</TouchableOpacity>
</View>
</ScrollView >
);
}
}
So when I press the cancel button, null is returned to the _onChangeFilter function of the list screen. This part works, and according to console.log and the debugger, the setState is not called. But if i set a breakpoint within the else part, i can see that this.state.usedFilters has changed.

Answer 1

Ok after a while i figured it out. The problem was that the whole filters list was always just referenced since react native (js) seems to always use references, even when changing sub-parts of the lists.
fixed that by using lodash cloneDeep.