Creating a custom useHoverEffect hook for handling side effects based on hover state

11 Oct 2023

Side effects based on the hover state of an element are a common requirement in web development. Whether it’s changing the style, triggering animations, or displaying additional information, handling hover effects efficiently is essential.

In this blog post, we’ll explore how to create a custom useHoverEffect hook in React to handle side effects based on the hover state of a component.

Introduction
Prerequisites
Getting Started
- Creating the Hook
- Using the Hook
Conclusion

Introduction

The useHoverEffect hook is a custom hook that encapsulates the logic required to handle side effects based on the hover state of a component. It allows us to easily add hover behavior to any component without duplicating code.

Prerequisites

To follow along with this tutorial, you should have a basic understanding of React hooks and functional components.

Getting Started

Creating the Hook

Let’s start by creating a new file called useHoverEffect.js and defining our custom hook.

import { useState, useEffect } from 'react';

const useHoverEffect = () => {
  const [isHovered, setIsHovered] = useState(false);

  useEffect(() => {
    const handleMouseEnter = () => {
      setIsHovered(true);
    };

    const handleMouseLeave = () => {
      setIsHovered(false);
    };

    const element = document.querySelector('#my-element');

    if (element) {
      element.addEventListener('mouseenter', handleMouseEnter);
      element.addEventListener('mouseleave', handleMouseLeave);
    }

    return () => {
      if (element) {
        element.removeEventListener('mouseenter', handleMouseEnter);
        element.removeEventListener('mouseleave', handleMouseLeave);
      }
    };
  }, []);

  return isHovered;
};

export default useHoverEffect;

In the above code, we import the necessary hooks useState and useEffect from the React library. We create a state variable isHovered using the useState hook to keep track of the hover state.

Inside the useEffect hook, we define event handlers for mouseenter and mouseleave events. We attach these handlers to the element with the ID “my-element” using querySelector. Finally, we remove the event listeners when the component unmounts.

Using the Hook

Now let’s see an example of how to use the useHoverEffect hook in a component.

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

const MyComponent = () => {
  const isHovered = useHoverEffect();

  return (
    <div id="my-element">
      {isHovered ? 'Hovered' : 'Not Hovered'}
    </div>
  );
};

export default MyComponent;

In the above code, we import the useHoverEffect hook and use it in our MyComponent functional component. The isHovered variable returned by the hook holds the current hover state.

We render a <div> element with the ID “my-element”. The text content of the element depends on the value of isHovered. It will display “Hovered” when the element is being hovered and “Not Hovered” otherwise.

Conclusion

With the implementation of the useHoverEffect hook, we have created a reusable solution for handling hover-based side effects in React. By encapsulating the logic into a custom hook, we can easily add hover behavior to any component in our application.

By leveraging custom hooks, we can improve code reusability and maintainability in our React projects. Happy coding!

#hashtags: #React #CustomHooks

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