useBreakpoints: a hook
I built my first hook a few months ago, and figured I should get it up on the blog. It's a replacement for a Higher Order Component that exists in a codebase I'm working on. That HoC passes a breakpoint to a component that dictates how the component renders across different breakpoints.
If you want to play around with the component, you can find it on Code Sandbox. I'll also briefly walk you through how it works.
import { useState, useEffect } from "react"; import { debounce } from "./debounce"; const setBreakpoints = (width) => { if (width < 768) { return "isMobile"; } else if (width >= 768 && width <= 1024) { return "isTabletAndUp"; } else { return "isDesktopAndUp"; } }; function useBreakpoints() { const [width, setWidth] = useState(window.innerWidth); useEffect(() => { const handleResize = () => { debounce(setWidth(window.innerWidth)); }; window.addEventListener("resize", handleResize); return () => { window.removeEventListener("resize", handleResize); }; }, []); return setBreakpoints(width); } export default useBreakpoints;
The first thing useBreakpoints
does is set set the state. useState
lets you use React local state even when you're not in a class. To use it, you destructure an array, in which the first argument is whatever you want to call it, and the second lets you update the state (much like this.setState
).
In this hook, when a user resizes the screen, I set a new width on state with the setWidth
function inside of useEffect
. useEffect
lets you use something like lifecycle methods when you're not in a class. In other words,I reset the state with a new width. Then, I pass that new width to my setBreakpoints
function, which returns the correct breakpoint based on the size of the browser window.