Detect click outside React component

Question

I\'m looking for a way to detect if a click event happened outside of a component, as described in this article. jQuery closest() is used to see if the target from a click e

Answer 1

My biggest concern with all of the other answers is having to filter click events from the root/parent down. I found the easiest way was to simply set a sibling element with position: fixed, a z-index 1 behind the dropdown and handle the click event on the fixed element inside the same component. Keeps everything centralized to a given component.

Example code

#HTML

  

    ...content
  
  
 this.setState({open: false})}>
  


#SASS
.dropdown {
  display: none;
  position: absolute;
  top: 0px;
  left: 0px;
  z-index: 100;
  &.open {
    display: block;
  }
}
.outer-handler {
    position: fixed;
    top: 0;
    left: 0;
    right: 0;
    bottom: 0;
    opacity: 0;
    z-index: 99;
    display: none;
    &.open {
      display: block;
    }
}