React context not updating

Question

I have set a basic sample project that use Context to store the page title, but when I set it the component is not rerendered.

Principal files:

Context.js

import React from 'react'

const Context = React.createContext({})

export default Context

AppWrapper.js

import React from 'react'
import App from './App'
import Context from './Context'

function AppWrapper () {
  return (
    <Context.Provider value={{page: {}}}>
      <App />
    </Context.Provider>
  )
}

export default AppWrapper

App.js

import React, { useContext } from 'react';
import Context from './Context';
import Home from './Home';

function App() {
  const { page } = useContext(Context)
  return (
    <>
      <h1>Title: {page.title}</h1>
      <Home />
    </>
  );
}

export default App;

Home.js

import React, { useContext } from 'react'
import Context from './Context'

function Home () {
  const { page } = useContext(Context)
  page.title = 'Home'

  return (
    <p>Hello, World!</p>
  )
}

export default Home

full code

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Think about React context just like you would a component, if you want to update a value and show it then you need to use state. In this case you're AppWrapper where you render the context provider is where you need to track state.

import React, {useContext, useState, useCallback, useEffect} from 'react'

const PageContext = React.createContext({})

function Home() {
  const {setPageContext, page} = useContext(PageContext)
  // essentially a componentDidMount
  useEffect(() => {
    if (page.title !== 'Home')
      setPageContext({title: 'Home'})
  }, [setPageContext])
  return <p>Hello, World!</p>
}

function App() {
  const {page} = useContext(PageContext)
  return (
    <>
      <h1>Title: {page.title}</h1>
      <Home />
    </>
  )
}

function AppWrapper() {
  const [state, setState] = useState({page: {}})
  const setPageContext = useCallback(
    newState => {
      setState({page: {...state.page, ...newState}})
    },
    [state, setState],
  )
  const getContextValue = useCallback(
    () => ({setPageContext, ...state}),
    [state, updateState],
  )
  return (
    <PageContext.Provider value={getContextValue()}>
      <App />
    </PageContext.Provider>
  )
}

Edit - Updated working solution from linked repository

I renamed a few things to be a bit more specific, I wouldn't recommend passing setState through the context as that can be confusing and conflicting with a local state in a component. Also i'm omitting chunks of code that aren't necessary to the answer, just the parts I changed

src/AppContext.js

export const updatePageContext = (values = {}) => ({ page: values })
export const updateProductsContext = (values = {}) => ({ products: values })

export const Pages = {
  help: 'Help',
  home: 'Home',
  productsList: 'Products list',
  shoppingCart: 'Cart',
}

const AppContext = React.createContext({})

export default AppContext

---

src/AppWrapper.js

const getDefaultState = () => {
  // TODO rehydrate from persistent storage (localStorage.getItem(myLastSavedStateKey)) ?
  return {
    page: { title: 'Home' },
    products: {},
  }
}

function AppWrapper() {
  const [state, setState] = useState(getDefaultState())

  // here we only re-create setContext when its dependencies change ([state, setState])
  const setContext = useCallback(
    updates => {
      setState({ ...state, ...updates })
    },
    [state, setState],
  )

  // here context value is just returning an object, but only re-creating the object when its dependencies change ([state, setContext])
  const getContextValue = useCallback(
    () => ({
      ...state,
      setContext,
    }),
    [state, setContext],
  )
  return (
    <Context.Provider value={getContextValue()}>
      ...

---

src/App.js

...
import AppContext, { updateProductsContext } from './AppContext'

function App() {
  const [openDrawer, setOpenDrawer] = useState(false)
  const classes = useStyles()
  const {
    page: { title },
    setContext,
  } = useContext(Context)

  useEffect(() => {
    fetch(...)
      .then(...)
      .then(items => {
        setContext(updateProductsContext({ items }))
      })
  }, [])

---

src/components/DocumentMeta.js

this is a new component that you can use to update your page names in a declarative style reducing the code complexity/redundancy in each view

import React, { useContext, useEffect } from 'react'
import Context, { updatePageContext } from '../Context'

export default function DocumentMeta({ title }) {
  const { page, setContext } = useContext(Context)

  useEffect(() => {
    if (page.title !== title) {
      // TODO use this todo as a marker to also update the actual document title so the browser tab name changes to reflect the current view
      setContext(updatePageContext({ title }))
    }
  }, [title, page, setContext])
  return null
}

aka usage would be something like <DocumentMeta title="Whatever Title I Want Here" />

---

src/pages/Home.js

each view now just needs to import DocumentMeta and the Pages "enum" to update the title, instead of pulling the context in and manually doing it each time.

import { Pages } from '../Context'
import DocumentMeta from '../components/DocumentMeta'

function Home() {
  return (
    <>
      <DocumentMeta title={Pages.home} />
      <h1>WIP</h1>
    </>
  )
}

Note: The other pages need to replicate what the home page is doing

Remember this isn't how I would do this in a production environment, I'd write up a more generic helper to write data to your cache that can do more things in terms of performance, deep merging.. etc. But this should be a good starting point.