In this tutorial, we will learn how to create a custom React hook called useGeolocation that allows us to easily access the device’s geolocation. This will enable us to retrieve the latitude and longitude coordinates of the user’s device.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Prerequisites
• Creating the useGeolocation Hook
• Using the useGeolocation Hook
• Conclusion

Introduction

Geolocation is a common feature used in many web applications. It allows us to determine the physical location of a device using its latitude and longitude coordinates. In this tutorial, we will create a custom React hook that encapsulates the logic for accessing the device’s geolocation.

Prerequisites

To follow along with this tutorial, you will need:

• Basic knowledge of React hooks
• A text editor or an integrated development environment (IDE)
• Node.js and npm installed on your machine

Creating the useGeolocation Hook

Let’s start by creating a new file called useGeolocation.js where we will define our custom hook.

import { useEffect, useState } from 'react';

const useGeolocation = () => {
  const [position, setPosition] = useState(null);

  useEffect(() => {
    const handleSuccess = ({ coords }) => {
      setPosition({
        latitude: coords.latitude,
        longitude: coords.longitude,
      });
    };

    const handleError = (error) => {
      console.error(error);
    };

    if (navigator.geolocation) {
      navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(handleSuccess, handleError);
    } else {
      console.error('Geolocation is not supported by this browser.');
    }
  }, []);

  return position;
};

export default useGeolocation;

In the code above, we import the necessary dependencies from React. We define the useGeolocation hook, which initializes the position state variable using the useState hook. Inside the useEffect hook, we use the navigator.geolocation API to get the current position. If successful, we update the position state with the retrieved latitude and longitude coordinates.

Using the useGeolocation Hook

Now that we have our custom hook, let’s use it in a React component.

import React from 'react';
import useGeolocation from './useGeolocation';

const GeolocationComponent = () => {
  const position = useGeolocation();

  return (
    <div>
      <h1>Device Geolocation</h1>
      {position ? (
        <p>
          Latitude: {position.latitude}<br />
          Longitude: {position.longitude}
        </p>
      ) : (
        <p>Loading geolocation...</p>
      )}
    </div>
  );
};

export default GeolocationComponent;

In the code above, we import our custom useGeolocation hook and use it in the GeolocationComponent component. We render the latitude and longitude coordinates if they are available, or display a loading message if they are still being fetched.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we learned how to create a custom React hook called useGeolocation for easily accessing the device’s geolocation. This allows us to retrieve the latitude and longitude coordinates of the user’s device. By encapsulating this logic into a reusable hook, we can easily incorporate geolocation functionality into our React applications.