How to trigger an event when a component is shown when using react-native-navigation?

Question

I am using react-native with react-native-navigation. I would like to reload data when a component is shown. The component is shown when a user clicks on a tab navigation button.

Should I use react life cycle events or is there something in react-native-navigation that can trigger a function when a user navigates back to a component?

I am using redux, I am not sure if that could be used to help?

This issue refers to onDisplay which seems like what I am looking for. However I can't find any official documentation about it - https://github.com/wix/react-native-navigation/issues/130

Answer 1

I like the solution proposed by Bruno Reis. I tweaked mine to make it a bit simpler.

class Whatever extends Component {
    componentDidMount(){
        this.load()
        this.props.navigation.addListener('willFocus', this.load)
    }
    load = () => {
        ...
    }

}

Answer 2

include this as 'callIfBackToThisRoute'...

export default ( props, call ) => {
    if( !props.navigation ) throw 'I need props.navigation'
    const thisRoute = props.navigation.state.routeName;
    props.navigation.addListener(
        'willFocus',
        payload => {
            if( payload.state.routeName == thisRoute) call(props)
        }
    );
}

and use it inside your component...

componentDidMount() {
    const { doIt } = this.props;
    doIt()
    callIfBackToThisRoute(
        this.props,
        (props) => doIt()
    )
}

Answer 3

This is what I ended up using:

export default class RootNavigator extends React.Component {
  state = {currentScreen: null}

  _onNavigationStateChange(prevState, newState, action) {
    // const currentScreen = getCurrentRouteName(currentState)
    // const prevScreen = getCurrentRouteName(prevState)
    // console.debug('onNavigationStateChange currentScreen=', currentScreen,
    //   'prevScreen=', prevScreen, 'action.routeName=', action.routeName)
    console.debug('onNavigationStateChange action.routeName=', action.routeName)
    this.setState({currentScreen: action.routeName})
  }

  render() {
    return <RootStackNavigator onNavigationStateChange={this._onNavigationStateChange.bind(this)}
      screenProps={{currentScreen: this.state.currentScreen}}/>;
  }

coupled with componentDidUpdate() on the screen (which may or may not perform something depending on the screenProps's currentScreen).

Note: I don't know what/where getCurrentRouteName() is and it gave error for me so I don't use it and use action.routeName directly.

See https://github.com/react-community/react-navigation/issues/2371 and https://github.com/react-community/react-navigation/issues/51#issuecomment-323536642 for more information and discussion.

Answer 4

For RNN v3, after trying out for quite a couple times, I finally figured out the correct way:

  componentDidMount() {
    this.navigationEventListener = Navigation.events().bindComponent(this);
  }

  componentWillUnmount() {
    if (this.navigationEventListener) {
      this.navigationEventListener.remove();
    }
  }

  componentDidAppear() {   // Lazy loading data for RNN
    if (this.state.routes.length === 0) {
      this.getData();
    }
  }

The key is that, the binding of event listener is mandatory, otherwise the componentDidAppear() and componentDidDisappear() won't be triggered.

Answer 5

Override componentWillMount lifecycle method: https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/component-specs.html#mounting-componentwillmount Or just put the functionality inside render method