React setState hook from scroll event listener

Question

First of all, with a class component, this works fine and does not cause any issues.

However, in functional component with hooks, whenever I try to set state from my scroll event listener's function handleScroll, my state fails to get updated or app's performance gets affected drastically even though I am using debounce.

import React, { useState, useEffect } from "react";
import debounce from "debounce";

let prevScrollY = 0;

const App = () => {
  const [goingUp, setGoingUp] = useState(false);

  const handleScroll = () => {
    const currentScrollY = window.scrollY;
    if (prevScrollY < currentScrollY && goingUp) {
      debounce(() => {
        setGoingUp(false);
      }, 1000);
    }
    if (prevScrollY > currentScrollY && !goingUp) {
      debounce(() => {
        setGoingUp(true);
      }, 1000);
    }

    prevScrollY = currentScrollY;
    console.log(goingUp, currentScrollY);
  };

  useEffect(() => {
    window.addEventListener("scroll", handleScroll);
    return () => window.removeEventListener("scroll", handleScroll);
  }, []);

  return (
    <div>
      <div style={{ background: "orange", height: 100, margin: 10 }} />
      <div style={{ background: "orange", height: 100, margin: 10 }} />
      <div style={{ background: "orange", height: 100, margin: 10 }} />
      <div style={{ background: "orange", height: 100, margin: 10 }} />
      <div style={{ background: "orange", height: 100, margin: 10 }} />
      <div style={{ background: "orange", height: 100, margin: 10 }} />
      <div style={{ background: "orange", height: 100, margin: 10 }} />
      <div style={{ background: "orange", height: 100, margin: 10 }} />
    </div>
  );
};

export default App;

Tried to use useCallback hook in handleScroll function but it did not help much.

What am I doing wrong? How can I set state from handleScroll without a huge impact on performance?

I've created a sandbox with this issue.

Answer 1

In your code I see several issues:

1) [] in useEffect means it will not see any changes of state, like changes of goingUp. It will always see initial value of goingUp

2) debounce does not work so. It returns a new debounced function.

3) usually global variables is an anti-pattern, thought it works just in your case.

4) your scroll listener is not passive, as mentioned by @skyboyer.

import React, { useState, useEffect, useRef } from "react";

const App = () => {
  const prevScrollY = useRef(0);

  const [goingUp, setGoingUp] = useState(false);

  useEffect(() => {
    const handleScroll = () => {
      const currentScrollY = window.scrollY;
      if (prevScrollY.current < currentScrollY && goingUp) {
        setGoingUp(false);
      }
      if (prevScrollY.current > currentScrollY && !goingUp) {
        setGoingUp(true);
      }

      prevScrollY.current = currentScrollY;
      console.log(goingUp, currentScrollY);
    };

    window.addEventListener("scroll", handleScroll, { passive: true });

    return () => window.removeEventListener("scroll", handleScroll);
  }, [goingUp]);

  return (
    <div>
      <div style={{ background: "orange", height: 100, margin: 10 }} />
      <div style={{ background: "orange", height: 100, margin: 10 }} />
      <div style={{ background: "orange", height: 100, margin: 10 }} />
      <div style={{ background: "orange", height: 100, margin: 10 }} />
      <div style={{ background: "orange", height: 100, margin: 10 }} />
      <div style={{ background: "orange", height: 100, margin: 10 }} />
      <div style={{ background: "orange", height: 100, margin: 10 }} />
      <div style={{ background: "orange", height: 100, margin: 10 }} />
    </div>
  );
};

export default App;

https://codesandbox.io/s/react-setstate-from-event-listener-q7to8