Top React Hooks — Cookies, Debounce, and Clipboard

Hooks contains our logic code in our React app.

We can create our own hooks and use hooks provided by other people.

In this article, we’ll look at some useful React hooks.

React Recipes

React Recipes comes with many hooks that we can use to do various things.

We can use the useCopyClipboard hook to let us copy any string to the clipboard.

For instance, we can write:

import React from "react";
import { useCopyClipboard } from "react-recipes";

export default function App() {
  const [isCopied, setIsCopied] = useCopyClipboard();

  const copy = () => {
    setIsCopied("copy string");
  };

  return (
    <button onClick={copy} type="button">
      {isCopied ? "Copied" : "Copy"}
    </button>
  );
}

to create a button to copy a string to the clipboard.

The useCopyClipboard hook returns an array with the isCopied and setIsCopied variables.

isCopied indicates that the string is copied to the clipboard if it’s true .

setIsCopied copies the string to the clipboard.

The useDarkMode hook lets us toggle on and off dark mode.

The setting will be saved in local storage.

For instance, we can write:

import React from "react";
import { useDarkMode } from "react-recipes";

export default function App() {
  const [darkMode, setDarkMode] = useDarkMode();

  return (
    <div>
      <button onClick={() => setDarkMode(!darkMode)}>toggle dark mode</button>
      <p>{darkMode.toString()}</p>
    </div>
  );
}

The setDarkMode function sets whether dark mode is on or not.

darkMode has the toggle state of dark mode.

The setting would be saved as an entry with the key dark-mode-enabled in local storage.

It doesn’t come with any styles, so we’ve to set the dark mode styles ourselves.

useDebounce is a hook that lets us denounce any fast-changing value.

For instance, we can use it by writing:

import React from "react";
import { useDebounce } from "react-recipes";

export default function App() {
  const [searchTerm, setSearchTerm] = React.useState("");
  const [result, setResult] = React.useState({});

  const debouncedSearchTerm = useDebounce(searchTerm, 500);

  const search = async () => {
    const res = await fetch(`https://api.agify.io/?name=${debouncedSearchTerm}`);
    const data = await res.json();
    setResult(data);
  };

  React.useEffect(() => {
    if (debouncedSearchTerm) {
      search();
    }
  }, [debouncedSearchTerm]);

  return (
    <div>
      <input value={searchTerm} onChange={e => setSearchTerm(e.target.value)} />
      <p>{JSON.stringify(result)}</p>
    </div>
  );
}

We use the useDebounce hook with the searchTerm state.

The 2nd argument is the delay to set the debouncedSearchTerm value in milliseconds.

Then we pass that into the array in the 2nd argument of useEffect to watch its value.

It’ll run the search function to get the data if debouncedSearchTerm is set.

The useDimensions hook let us get the dimension of any element.

To use it, we can write:

import React from "react";
import { useDimensions } from "react-recipes";

export default function App() {
  const [wrapperRef, dimensions] = useDimensions();

  return (
    <div ref={wrapperRef}>
      height: {dimensions.height}
      width: {dimensions.width}
    </div>
  );
}

The hook returns the wrapperRef that we pass as the value of the ref prop of the element that we want to watch the size of.

dimensions has the dimensions of the div that we passed the ref to.

Then as we change the size of the viewport, we’ll see the dimensions update.

Conclusion

React Recipes has hooks for rebounding, copying to clipboard, watching element sizes, and manipulating cookies.