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

In my DROPDOWN case the Ben Bud's solution worked well, but I had a separate toggle button with an onClick handler. So the outside clicking logic conflicted with the button onClick toggler. Here is how I solved it by passing the button's ref as well:

import React, { useRef, useEffect, useState } from "react";

/**
 * Hook that triggers onClose when clicked outside of ref and buttonRef elements
 */
function useOutsideClicker(ref, buttonRef, onOutsideClick) {
  useEffect(() => {

    function handleClickOutside(event) {
      /* clicked on the element itself */
      if (ref.current && !ref.current.contains(event.target)) {
        return;
      }

      /* clicked on the toggle button */
      if (buttonRef.current && !buttonRef.current.contains(event.target)) {
        return;
      }

      /* If it's something else, trigger onClose */
      onOutsideClick();
    }

    // Bind the event listener
    document.addEventListener("mousedown", handleClickOutside);
    return () => {
      // Unbind the event listener on clean up
      document.removeEventListener("mousedown", handleClickOutside);
    };
  }, [ref]);
}

/**
 * Component that alerts if you click outside of it
 */
export default function DropdownMenu(props) {
  const wrapperRef = useRef(null);
  const buttonRef = useRef(null);
  const [dropdownVisible, setDropdownVisible] = useState(false);

  useOutsideClicker(wrapperRef, buttonRef, closeDropdown);

  const toggleDropdown = () => setDropdownVisible(visible => !visible);

  const closeDropdown = () => setDropdownVisible(false);

  return (
    

      Dropdown Toggler
      {dropdownVisible && 
{props.children}
}
    
  );
}