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

Typescript with Hooks

Note: I'm using React version 16.3, with React.createRef. For other versions use the ref callback.

Dropdown component:

interface DropdownProps {
 ...
};

export const Dropdown: React.FC () {
  const ref: React.RefObject = React.createRef();
  
  const handleClickOutside = (event: MouseEvent) => {
    if (ref && ref !== null) {
      const cur = ref.current;
      if (cur && !cur.contains(event.target as Node)) {
        // close all dropdowns
      }
    }
  }

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

  return (
    

        ...
    
  );
}