I'm still fairly new at React, but I've been grinding along slowly and I've encountered something I'm stuck on.
I am trying to build a "timer" component in React, and to be honest I don't know if I'm doing this right (or efficiently). In my code below, I set the state to return an object { currentCount: 10 }
and have been toying with componentDidMount
, componentWillUnmount
, and render
and I can only get the state to "count down" from 10 to 9.
Two-part question: What am I getting wrong? And, is there a more efficient way of going about using setTimeout (rather than using componentDidMount
& componentWillUnmount
)?
Thank you in advance.
import React from 'react';
var Clock = React.createClass({
getInitialState: function() {
return { currentCount: 10 };
},
componentDidMount: function() {
this.countdown = setInterval(this.timer, 1000);
},
componentWillUnmount: function() {
clearInterval(this.countdown);
},
timer: function() {
this.setState({ currentCount: 10 });
},
render: function() {
var displayCount = this.state.currentCount--;
return (
<section>
{displayCount}
</section>
);
}
});
module.exports = Clock;
I see 4 issues with your code:
setState
method to actually change the stateLet's try to fix that:
componentDidMount: function() {
var intervalId = setInterval(this.timer, 1000);
// store intervalId in the state so it can be accessed later:
this.setState({intervalId: intervalId});
},
componentWillUnmount: function() {
// use intervalId from the state to clear the interval
clearInterval(this.state.intervalId);
},
timer: function() {
// setState method is used to update the state
this.setState({ currentCount: this.state.currentCount -1 });
},
render: function() {
// You do not need to decrease the value here
return (
<section>
{this.state.currentCount}
</section>
);
}
This would result in a timer that decreases from 10 to -N. If you want timer that decreases to 0, you can use slightly modified version:
timer: function() {
var newCount = this.state.currentCount - 1;
if(newCount >= 0) {
this.setState({ currentCount: newCount });
} else {
clearInterval(this.state.intervalId);
}
},