How to focus something on next render with React Hooks

Question

You can use the useEffect hook to run a function after every render when isEditing changed. In this function you can check if isEditing is true and focus the input.

Example

const { useState, useRef, useEffect } = React;

const EditableField = () => {
  const [isEditing, setEditing] = useState(false);
  const toggleEditing = () => {
    setEditing(!isEditing);
  };

  const inputRef = useRef(null);

  useEffect(() => {
    if (isEditing) {
      inputRef.current.focus();
    }
  }, [isEditing]);
  
  return (
    <div>
      {isEditing && <input ref={inputRef} />}
      <button onClick={toggleEditing}>Edit</button>
    </div>
  );
};

ReactDOM.render(<EditableField />, document.getElementById("root"));

<script src="https://unpkg.com/react@16.7.0-alpha.2/umd/react.production.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/react-dom@16.7.0-alpha.2/umd/react-dom.production.min.js"></script>
  
<div id="root"></div>

Leave a Comment Cancel reply