React hooks useState Array

You should not set state (or do anything else with side effects) from within the rendering function. When using hooks, you can use useEffect for this.

The following version works:

import React, { useState, useEffect } from "react";
import ReactDOM from "react-dom";

const StateSelector = () => {
  const initialValue = [
    { id: 0, value: " --- Select a State ---" }];

  const allowedState = [
    { id: 1, value: "Alabama" },
    { id: 2, value: "Georgia" },
    { id: 3, value: "Tennessee" }
  ];

  const [stateOptions, setStateValues] = useState(initialValue);
  // initialValue.push(...allowedState);

  console.log(initialValue.length);
  // ****** BEGINNING OF CHANGE ******
  useEffect(() => {
    // Should not ever set state during rendering, so do this in useEffect instead.
    setStateValues(allowedState);
  }, []);
  // ****** END OF CHANGE ******

  return (<div>
    <label>Select a State:</label>
    <select>
      {stateOptions.map((localState, index) => (
        <option key={localState.id}>{localState.value}</option>
      ))}
    </select>
  </div>);
};

const rootElement = document.getElementById("root");
ReactDOM.render(<StateSelector />, rootElement);

and here it is in a code sandbox.

I’m assuming that you want to eventually load the list of states from some dynamic source (otherwise you could just use allowedState directly without using useState at all). If so, that api call to load the list could also go inside the useEffect block.