Creating a custom useNetworkStatusEffect hook for handling side effects based on network status changes

11 Oct 2023

In modern web applications, it is essential to handle side effects based on network status changes. To simplify this process and make it reusable across different components, we can create a custom React hook called useNetworkStatusEffect. This hook will allow us to execute specific code when the network status changes. In this blog post, we will explore how to create and use this custom hook.

Introduction
Prerequisites
Implementation
Usage
Conclusion

Introduction

The navigator.onLine property in JavaScript provides information about the user’s network connectivity status. By utilizing this property, we can create a custom hook that triggers specific code when the network status changes. This can be useful for showing error messages, synchronizing data, or updating UI components based on network availability.

Prerequisites

To follow along with this tutorial, you should have a basic understanding of React hooks and JavaScript. Make sure you have React and a package manager like npm or Yarn installed in your project.

Implementation

Let’s start by creating the useNetworkStatusEffect hook. Open up your code editor and create a new file called useNetworkStatusEffect.js. Inside this file, we will define our custom hook.

import { useEffect } from 'react';

const useNetworkStatusEffect = (callback) => {
  useEffect(() => {
    const handleNetworkChange = () => {
      callback(navigator.onLine);
    };

    window.addEventListener('online', handleNetworkChange);
    window.addEventListener('offline', handleNetworkChange);

    return () => {
      window.removeEventListener('online', handleNetworkChange);
      window.removeEventListener('offline', handleNetworkChange);
    };
  }, [callback]);
};

export default useNetworkStatusEffect;

In this hook, we use the useEffect hook to add event listeners for the online and offline events. The handleNetworkChange function is called whenever the network status changes. Inside this function, we invoke the callback function with the updated network status.

To clean up the event listeners when the component unmounts, we return a function inside the useEffect hook. This function removes the event listeners from the window object.

Usage

To use the useNetworkStatusEffect hook, import it into your component and call it with a callback function. This callback function will receive the network status as a parameter whenever it changes.

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

const MyComponent = () => {
  const handleNetworkChange = (isOnline) => {
    if (isOnline) {
      // Execute code when the user goes online
    } else {
      // Execute code when the user goes offline
    }
  };

  useNetworkStatusEffect(handleNetworkChange);

  return (
    <div>
      {/* Rest of the component */}
    </div>
  );
};

export default MyComponent;

In the example above, we define a handleNetworkChange function that receives the isOnline parameter. Inside this function, we can perform the necessary actions based on the network status. We then call the useNetworkStatusEffect hook passing in the handleNetworkChange function.

Now, whenever the network status changes, the corresponding code block in the handleNetworkChange function will be executed.

Conclusion

In this blog post, we have learned how to create a custom useNetworkStatusEffect hook to handle side effects based on network status changes. By encapsulating this functionality into a reusable hook, we can easily manage network-dependent actions in our React applications.

Feel free to customize this hook according to your specific requirements. You can further enhance it by adding error handling, notifications, or any other actions you need.

By using this custom hook, you can ensure a seamless user experience even when dealing with network-dependent functionality.

Hashtags

#useNetworkStatusEffect #React

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