You could give an empty array as second argument to useEffect so that the function is only run once after the initial render. Because of how closures work, this will make the counter variable always reference the initial value. You could then use the function version of setCounter instead to always get the correct value.
Example
const { useState, useEffect } = React;
function App() {
const [counter, setCounter] = useState(0);
useEffect(() => {
const interval = setInterval(() => {
setCounter(counter => counter + 1);
}, 1000);
return () => {
clearInterval(interval);
};
}, []);
return <h1>{counter}</h1>;
};
ReactDOM.render(
<App />,
document.getElementById('root')
);<script src="https://unpkg.com/react@16.7.0-alpha.0/umd/react.development.js"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/react-dom@16.7.0-alpha.0/umd/react-dom.development.js"></script>
<div id="root"></div>A more versatile approach would be to create a new custom hook that stores the function in a ref and only creates a new interval if the delay should change, like Dan Abramov does in his great blog post “Making setInterval Declarative with React Hooks”.
Example
const { useState, useEffect, useRef } = React;
function useInterval(callback, delay) {
const savedCallback = useRef();
// Remember the latest callback.
useEffect(() => {
savedCallback.current = callback;
}, [callback]);
// Set up the interval.
useEffect(() => {
let id = setInterval(() => {
savedCallback.current();
}, delay);
return () => clearInterval(id);
}, [delay]);
}
function App() {
const [counter, setCounter] = useState(0);
useInterval(() => {
setCounter(counter + 1);
}, 1000);
return <h1>{counter}</h1>;
};
ReactDOM.render(
<App />,
document.getElementById('root')
);<script src="https://unpkg.com/react@16.7.0-alpha.0/umd/react.development.js"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/react-dom@16.7.0-alpha.0/umd/react-dom.development.js"></script>
<div id="root"></div>