ReactJS can't set state from an event with event.persist()
I need to set a state field which I get from an event, but it doesn't get set when I pass a function to it. The component and method looks like the following:
constructor(props: SomeProps, context: any) {
super(props, context);
this.state = {
isFiltering: props.isFiltering,
anchor: "",
};
}
private toggleFilter = (event: any) => {
event.persist()
this.setState(prevState => ({
isFiltering: !prevState.isFiltering,
anchor: event.currentTarget // does not work, it's null
}));
}
If I remove
event.persist()
This synthetic event is reused for performance reasons. If you're seeing this, you're accessing the methodon a released/nullified synthetic event. This is a no-op function. If you must keep the original synthetic event around, use event.persist(). See https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/events.html#event-pooling for more information.currentTarget
For some reason the following code works:
private toggleFilter = (event: any) => {
this.setState({anchor:event.currentTarget}) // works fine
this.setState(prevState => ({
isFiltering: !prevState.isFiltering,
}));
}
Why does the above works but not when I use
this.setState(prevState=> ...)
That's the expected behaviour, because event.persist() doesn't imply that currentTarget is not being nullified, in fact it should be - that's compliant with browser's native implementation.
This means that if you want to access currentTarget in async way, you need to cache it in a variable as you did in your answer.
To cite one of the React core developers - Ben Alpert.
currentTarget changes as the event bubbles up – if you had a event handler on the element receiving the event and others on its ancestors, they'd see different values for currentTarget. IIRC nulling it out is consistent with what happens on native events; if not, let me know and we'll reconsider our behavior here.
Check out the source of the discussion in the official React repository and the following snippet provided by Ben that I've touched a bit.
var savedEvent;
var savedTarget;
divb.addEventListener('click', function(e) {
savedEvent = e;
savedTarget = e.currentTarget;
setTimeout(function() {
console.log('b: currentTarget is now ' + e.currentTarget);
}, 0);
}, false);
diva.addEventListener('click', function(e) {
console.log('same event object? ' + (e === savedEvent));
console.log('same target? ' + (savedTarget === e.currentTarget));
setTimeout(function() {
console.log('a: currentTarget is now ' + e.currentTarget);
}, 0);
}, false);div {
padding: 50px;
background: rgba(0,0,0,0.5);
color: white;
}<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>JS Bin</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="diva"><div id="divb"> Click me and see output! </div></div>
</body>
</html>