Can I execute a function after setState is finished updating?

Question

I am very new to React JS (as in, just started today). I don't quite understand how setState works. I am combining React and Easel JS to draw a grid based on user input. Here is my JS bin: http://jsbin.com/zatula/edit?js,output

Here is the code:

        var stage;

    var Grid = React.createClass({
        getInitialState: function() {
            return {
                rows: 10,
                cols: 10
            }
        },
        componentDidMount: function () {
            this.drawGrid();
        },
        drawGrid: function() {
            stage = new createjs.Stage("canvas");
            var rectangles = [];
            var rectangle;
            //Rows
            for (var x = 0; x < this.state.rows; x++)
            {
                // Columns
                for (var y = 0; y < this.state.cols; y++)
                {
                    var color = "Green";
                    rectangle = new createjs.Shape();
                    rectangle.graphics.beginFill(color);
                    rectangle.graphics.drawRect(0, 0, 32, 44);
                    rectangle.x = x * 33;
                    rectangle.y = y * 45;

                    stage.addChild(rectangle);

                    var id = rectangle.x + "_" + rectangle.y;
                    rectangles[id] = rectangle;
                }
            }
            stage.update();
        },
        updateNumRows: function(event) {
            this.setState({ rows: event.target.value });
            this.drawGrid();
        },
        updateNumCols: function(event) {
            this.setState({ cols: event.target.value });
            this.drawGrid();
        },
        render: function() {
            return (
                <div>
                    <div className="canvas-wrapper">
                        <canvas id="canvas" width="400" height="500"></canvas>
                        <p>Rows: { this.state.rows }</p>
                        <p>Columns: {this.state.cols }</p>
                    </div>
                    <div className="array-form">
                        <form>
                            <label>Number of Rows</label>
                            <select id="numRows" value={this.state.rows} onChange={ this.updateNumRows }>
                                <option value="1">1</option>
                                <option value="2">2</option>
                                <option value ="5">5</option>
                                <option value="10">10</option>
                                <option value="12">12</option>
                                <option value="15">15</option>
                                <option value="20">20</option>
                            </select>
                            <label>Number of Columns</label>
                            <select id="numCols" value={this.state.cols} onChange={ this.updateNumCols }>
                                <option value="1">1</option>
                                <option value="2">2</option>
                                <option value="5">5</option>
                                <option value="10">10</option>
                                <option value="12">12</option>
                                <option value="15">15</option>
                                <option value="20">20</option>
                            </select>
                        </form>
                    </div>    
                </div>
            );
        }
    });
    ReactDOM.render(
        <Grid />,
        document.getElementById("container")
    );

You can see in the JS bin when you change the number of rows or columns with one of the dropdowns, nothing will happen the first time. The next time you change a dropdown value, the grid will draw to the previous state's row and column values. I am guessing this is happening because my this.drawGrid() function is executing before setState is complete. Maybe there is another reason?

Thanks for your time and help!

Answer 1

setState(updater[, callback]) is an async function:

https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/react-component.html#setstate

You can execute a function after setState is finishing using the second param callback like:

this.setState({
    someState: obj
}, () => {
    this.afterSetStateFinished();
});

Answer 2

render will be called every time you setState to re-render the component if there are changes. If you move your call to drawGrid there rather than calling it in your update* methods, you shouldn't have a problem.

If that doesn't work for you, there is also an overload of setState that takes a callback as a second parameter. You should be able to take advantage of that as a last resort.

Answer 3

when new props or states being received (like you call setState here), React will invoked some functions, which are called componentWillUpdate and componentDidUpdate

in your case, just simply add a componentDidUpdate function to call this.drawGrid()

here is working code in JS Bin

as I mentioned, in the code, componentDidUpdate will be invoked after this.setState(...)

then componentDidUpdate inside is going to call this.drawGrid()

read more about component Lifecycle in React https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/component-specs.html#updating-componentwillupdate

Answer 4

Making setState return a Promise

In addition to passing a callback to setState() method, you can wrap it around an async function and use the then() method -- which in some cases might produce a cleaner code:

(async () => new Promise(resolve => this.setState({dummy: true}), resolve)()
    .then(() => { console.log('state:', this.state) });

And here you can take this one more step ahead and make a reusable setState function that in my opinion is better than the above version:

const promiseState = async state =>
    new Promise(resolve => this.setState(state, resolve));

promiseState({...})
    .then(() => promiseState({...})
    .then(() => {
        ...  // other code
        return promiseState({...});
    })
    .then(() => {...});

This works fine in React 16.4, but I haven't tested it in earlier versions of React yet.

Also worth mentioning that keeping your callback code in componentDidUpdate method is a better practice in most -- probably all, cases.