how to use react events

In this chapter, we will learn how to use events.

Simple Example

This is a simple example where we will only use one component. We are just adding onClick event that will trigger updateState function once the button is clicked.

App.jsx

import React from 'react';

class App extends React.Component {
   constructor(props) {
      super(props);
      
      this.state = {
         data: 'Initial data...'
      }
      this.updateState = this.updateState.bind(this);
   };
   updateState() {
      this.setState({data: 'Data updated...'})
   }
   render() {
      return (
         <div>
            <button onClick = {this.updateState}>CLICK</button>
            <h4>{this.state.data}</h4>
         </div>
      );
   }
}
export default App;

main.js

import React from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';
import App from './App.jsx';

ReactDOM.render(<App/>, document.getElementById('app'));

This will produce the following result.

Child Events

When we need to update the state of the parent component from its child, we can create an event handler (updateState) in the parent component and pass it as a prop (updateStateProp) to the child component where we can just call it.

App.jsx

import React from 'react';

class App extends React.Component {
   constructor(props) {
      super(props);
      
      this.state = {
         data: 'Initial data...'
      }
      this.updateState = this.updateState.bind(this);
   };
   updateState() {
      this.setState({data: 'Data updated from the child component...'})
   }
   render() {
      return (
         <div>
            <Content myDataProp = {this.state.data} 
               updateStateProp = {this.updateState}></Content>
         </div>
      );
   }
}
class Content extends React.Component {
   render() {
      return (
         <div>
            <button onClick = {this.props.updateStateProp}>CLICK</button>
            <h3>{this.props.myDataProp}</h3>
         </div>
      );
   }
}
export default App;

main.js

import React from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';
import App from './App.jsx';

ReactDOM.render(<App/>, document.getElementById('app'));

This will produce the following result.

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