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How can I correctly use the React context API in a class based component? [duplicate]

In this example, I have this react class:
class MyDiv extends React.component
constructor(){
this.state={sampleState:'hello world'}
}
render(){
return <div>{this.state.sampleState}
}
}
The question is if I can add React hooks to this. I understand that React-Hooks is alternative to React Class style. But if I wish to slowly migrate into React hooks, can I add useful hooks into Classes?

High order components are how we have been doing this type of thing until hooks came along. You can write a simple high order component wrapper for your hook.
function withMyHook(Component) {
return function WrappedComponent(props) {
const myHookValue = useMyHook();
return <Component {...props} myHookValue={myHookValue} />;
}
}
While this isn't truly using a hook directly from a class component, this will at least allow you to use the logic of your hook from a class component, without refactoring.
class MyComponent extends React.Component {
render(){
const myHookValue = this.props.myHookValue;
return <div>{myHookValue}</div>;
}
}
export default withMyHook(MyComponent);

Class components don't support hooks -
According to the Hooks-FAQ:
You can’t use Hooks inside of a class component, but you can definitely mix classes and function components with Hooks in a single tree. Whether a component is a class or a function that uses Hooks is an implementation detail of that component. In the longer term, we expect Hooks to be the primary way people write React components.

As other answers already explain, hooks API was designed to provide function components with functionality that currently is available only in class components. Hooks aren't supposed to used in class components.
Class components can be written to make easier a migration to function components.
With a single state:
class MyDiv extends Component {
state = {sampleState: 'hello world'};
render(){
const { state } = this;
const setState = state => this.setState(state);
return <div onClick={() => setState({sampleState: 1})}>{state.sampleState}</div>;
}
}
is converted to
const MyDiv = () => {
const [state, setState] = useState({sampleState: 'hello world'});
return <div onClick={() => setState({sampleState: 1})}>{state.sampleState}</div>;
}
Notice that useState state setter doesn't merge state properties automatically, this should be covered with setState(prevState => ({ ...prevState, foo: 1 }));
With multiple states:
class MyDiv extends Component {
state = {sampleState: 'hello world'};
render(){
const { sampleState } = this.state;
const setSampleState = sampleState => this.setState({ sampleState });
return <div onClick={() => setSampleState(1)}>{sampleState}</div>;
}
}
is converted to
const MyDiv = () => {
const [sampleState, setSampleState] = useState('hello world');
return <div onClick={() => setSampleState(1)}>{sampleState}</div>;
}

Complementing Joel Cox's good answer
Render Props also enable the usage of Hooks inside class components, if more flexibility is needed:
class MyDiv extends React.Component {
render() {
return (
<HookWrapper
// pass state/props from inside of MyDiv to Hook
someProp={42}
// process Hook return value
render={hookValue => <div>Hello World! {hookValue}</div>}
/>
);
}
}
function HookWrapper({ someProp, render }) {
const hookValue = useCustomHook(someProp);
return render(hookValue);
}
For side effect Hooks without return value:
function HookWrapper({ someProp }) {
useCustomHook(someProp);
return null;
}
// ... usage
<HookWrapper someProp={42} />
Source: React Training

you can achieve this by generic High order components
HOC
import React from 'react';
const withHook = (Component, useHook, hookName = 'hookvalue') => {
return function WrappedComponent(props) {
const hookValue = useHook();
return <Component {...props} {...{[hookName]: hookValue}} />;
};
};
export default withHook;
Usage
class MyComponent extends React.Component {
render(){
const myUseHookValue = this.props.myUseHookValue;
return <div>{myUseHookValue}</div>;
}
}
export default withHook(MyComponent, useHook, 'myUseHookValue');

Hooks are not meant to be used for classes but rather functions. If you wish to use hooks, you can start by writing new code as functional components with hooks
According to React FAQs
You can’t use Hooks inside of a class component, but you can
definitely mix classes and function components with Hooks in a single
tree. Whether a component is a class or a function that uses Hooks is
an implementation detail of that component. In the longer term, we
expect Hooks to be the primary way people write React components.
const MyDiv = () => {
const [sampleState, setState] = useState('hello world');
render(){
return <div>{sampleState}</div>
}
}

You can use the react-universal-hooks library. It lets you use the "useXXX" functions within the render function of class-components.
It's worked great for me so far. The only issue is that since it doesn't use the official hooks, the values don't show react-devtools.
To get around this, I created an equivalent by wrapping the hooks, and having them store their data (using object-mutation to prevent re-renders) on component.state.hookValues. (you can access the component by auto-wrapping the component render functions, to run set currentCompBeingRendered = this)
For more info on this issue (and details on the workaround), see here: https://github.com/salvoravida/react-universal-hooks/issues/7

Stateful components or containers or class-based components ever support the functions of React Hooks, so we don't need to React Hooks in Stateful components just in stateless components.
Some additional informations
What are React Hooks?
So what are hooks? Well hooks are a new way or offer us a new way of writing our components.
Thus far, of course we have functional and class-based components, right? Functional components receive props and you return some JSX code that should be rendered to the screen.
They are great for presentation, so for rendering the UI part, not so much about the business logic and they are typically focused on one or a few purposes per component.
Class-based components on the other hand also will receive props but they also have this internal state. Therefore class-based components are the components which actually hold the majority of our business logic, so with business logic, I mean things like we make an HTTP request and we need to handle the response and to change the internal state of the app or maybe even without HTTP. A user fills out the form and we want to show this somewhere on the screen, we need state for this, we need class-based components for this and therefore we also typically use class based components to orchestrate our other components and pass our state down as props to functional components for example.
Now one problem we have with this separation, with all the benefits it adds but one problem we have is that converting from one component form to the other is annoying. It's not really difficult but it is annoying.
If you ever found yourself in a situation where you needed to convert a functional component into a class-based one, it's a lot of typing and a lot of typing of always the same things, so it's annoying.
A bigger problem in quotation marks is that lifecycle hooks can be hard to use right.
Obviously, it's not hard to add componentDidMount and execute some code in there but knowing which lifecycle hook to use, when and how to use it correctly, that can be challenging especially in more complex applications and anyways, wouldn't it be nice if we had one way of creating components and that super component could then handle both state and side effects like HTTP requests and also render the user interface?
Well, this is exactly what hooks are all about. Hooks give us a new way of creating functional components and that is important.

React Hooks let you use react features and lifecycle without writing a class.
It's like the equivalent version of the class component with much smaller and readable form factor. You should migrate to React hooks because it's fun to write it.
But you can't write react hooks inside a class component, as it's introduced for functional component.
This can be easily converted to :
class MyDiv extends React.component
constructor(){
this.state={sampleState:'hello world'}
}
render(){
return <div>{this.state.sampleState}
}
}
const MyDiv = () => {
const [sampleState, setSampleState] = useState('hello world');
return <div>{sampleState}</div>
}

It won't be possible with your existing class components. You'll have to convert your class component into a functional component and then do something on the lines of -
function MyDiv() {
const [sampleState, setSampleState] = useState('hello world');
return (
<div>{sampleState}</div>
)
}

For me React.createRef() was helpful.
ex.:
constructor(props) {
super(props);
this.myRef = React.createRef();
}
...
<FunctionComponent ref={this.myRef} />
Origin post here.

I've made a library for this. React Hookable Component.
Usage is very simple. Replace extends Component or extends PureComponent with extends HookableComponent or extends HookablePureComponent. You can then use hooks in the render() method.
import { HookableComponent } from 'react-hookable-component';
// 👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇
class ComponentThatUsesHook extends HookableComponent<Props, State> {
render() {
// 👇👇👇👇👇👇
const value = useSomeHook();
return <span>The value is {value}</span>;
}
}

if you didn't need to change your class component then create another functional component and do hook stuff and import it to class component

Doesn't work anymore in modern React Versions. Took me forever, but finally resulted going back to go ol' callbacks. Only thing that worked for me, all other's threw the know React Hook Call (outside functional component) error.
Non-React or React Context:
class WhateverClass {
private xyzHook: (XyzHookContextI) | undefined
public setHookAccessor (xyzHook: XyzHookContextI): void {
this.xyzHook = xyzHook
}
executeHook (): void {
const hookResult = this.xyzHook?.specificHookFunction()
...
}
}
export const Whatever = new WhateverClass() // singleton
Your hook (or your wrapper for an external Hook)
export interface XyzHookContextI {
specificHookFunction: () => Promise<string>
}
const XyzHookContext = createContext<XyzHookContextI>(undefined as any)
export function useXyzHook (): XyzHookContextI {
return useContext(XyzHookContextI)
}
export function XyzHook (props: PropsWithChildren<{}>): JSX.Element | null {
async function specificHookFunction (): Promise<void> {
...
}
const context: XyzHookContextI = {
specificHookFunction
}
// and here comes the magic in wiring that hook up with the non function component context via callback
Whatever.setHookAccessor(context)
return (
< XyzHookContext.Provider value={context}>
{props.children}
</XyzHookContext.Provider>
)
}
Voila, now you can use ANY react code (via hook) from any other context (class components, vanilla-js, …)!
(…hope I didn't make to many name change mistakes :P)

Yes, but not directly.
Try react-iifc, more details in its readme.
https://github.com/EnixCoda/react-iifc

Try with-component-hooks:
https://github.com/bplok20010/with-component-hooks
import withComponentHooks from 'with-component-hooks';
class MyComponent extends React.Component {
render(){
const props = this.props;
const [counter, set] = React.useState(0);
//TODO...
}
}
export default withComponentHooks(MyComponent)
2.Try react-iifc： https://github.com/EnixCoda/react-iifc

What's the purpose of using classes in React?

I mostly see JavaScript use classes as a constructor as following:
class Rectangle {
constructor(height, width) {
this.height = height;
this.width = width;
}
// Getter
get area() {
return this.calcArea();
}
// Method
calcArea() {
return this.height * this.width;
}
}
What's the reason React uses classes without using the contructor() function, such as following? I don't see classes being used to create instances.
class App extends Component {
render() {
return (
<div className="app-content">
</div>
)
}
}

Right now you should use classes in React if you need to use "advanced" component lifecycle methods like shouldComponentUpdate() or such.
Previously class components were used to handle local state in them. Right now we have Hooks API which allows to use state in a more elegant way and without need of class components.
If you want more details, you can read the article by Dan Abramov: How Are Function Components Different from Classes?.
Regardless your example, you're right, this code:
class App extends Component {
render() {
return (
<div className="app-content">
</div>
)
}
}
can be written as:
function App() {
return <div className="app-content"></div>
}

What's the reason React uses classes without using the contructor() function
From the JavaScript class doc:
If you do not specify a constructor method, a default constructor is used.
So a constructor exists for every class whether a constructor method is specified or not.
I don't see classes being used to create instances.
React components implemented as classes get instantiated by React as part of the rendering process.
Specifically, in the new React Fiber creating an instance of a React class component happens on this line of the source code.
But yes, #vicondin is right that the simple component from the question can be implemented as a function component, that class components used to be the only way to maintain state, implement lifecycle methods, etc., and that the new Hooks makes it possible to...
use state and other React features without writing a class.

In React, state is used in a React class component. There you can set initial state in the constructor of the class, but also access and update it with this.state and this.setState, because you have access to the class instance by using the this object.
If you use class in React component, even without using constructor() you can set initial state like below:
class App extends Component {
state = {
hello: 'Hello'
};
onClickHello = value => {
this.setState({ hello: 'Why did you clicked?' });
};
render() {
return (
<div className="app-content" onClick={this.onClickHello}>
{this.state.hello}
</div>
)
}
}
Another advantage is you can make use of all the React lifecycle methods
Update: After React16, you can use the lifecycle events even in function components using react hooks

Also biggest reason is the handling of state and lifecycle(componendDidMount ..etc) , class can do everything functions can , but at the cost of readability and statelessness . But in the most cases I rarely use classes only if I need a complex parent component with lifecycle

React - should Higher Order Component be written as a function?

I'm learning React. It seems to me that HOC like the following example from React's official docs:
function withSubscription(WrappedComponent, selectData) {
// ...and returns another component...
return class extends React.Component {
constructor(props) {
super(props);
this.handleChange = this.handleChange.bind(this);
this.state = {
data: selectData(DataSource, props)
};
}
componentDidMount() {
// ... that takes care of the subscription...
DataSource.addChangeListener(this.handleChange);
}
componentWillUnmount() {
DataSource.removeChangeListener(this.handleChange);
}
handleChange() {
this.setState({
data: selectData(DataSource, this.props)
});
}
render() {
// ... and renders the wrapped component with the fresh data!
// Notice that we pass through any additional props
return <WrappedComponent data={this.state.data} {...this.props} />;
}
};
}
can be rewritten in this way:
class WithSubscription extends React.Component {
constructor({ component, selectData, ...props }) {
super(props);
this.handleChange = this.handleChange.bind(this);
this.state = {
data: selectData(DataSource, props)
};
}
componentDidMount() {
DataSource.addChangeListener(this.handleChange);
}
componentWillUnmount() {
DataSource.removeChangeListener(this.handleChange);
}
handleChange() {
this.setState({
data: selectData(DataSource, this.props)
});
}
render() {
return <component data={this.state.data} {...this.props} />;
}
}
Then use it like this:
<WithSubscription component={BlogPost} selectData={(DataSource) => DataSource.getComments()} />
Are they both HOC? When is one style preferred than the other?

I was struggling with HOC too at first. Another way of looking at this is at wrappers of components that you could use to isolate the functionality from one component.
For example, I have multiple HOC. I have many components that are only defined by props, and they are immutable once they are created.
Then I have a Loader HOC Component, which handles all the network connectivity and then just passes the props to whatever component is wrapping (This would be the component you pass to the HOC).
The loader does not really care which component it is rendering, it only needs to fetch data, and pass it to the wrapped component.
In your example, you can actually accomplish the same, however it will become much more complex once you need to chain multiple HOC.
For example I have this chain of HOCs:
PermissionsHOC -> LoaderHOC -> BorderLayoutHOC -> Component
First one can check your permissions, second one is loading the data, third one is giving a generic layout and the forth one is the actual component.
It is much easier to detect HOCs if you realize that some components would benefit from having a generic logic on the parent. You could do the same in your example, however you would need to modify the HOC every time you add a child component, to add the logic for that one. Not very effective. This way, you can add new components easily. I do have a Base component which every component extends, but I use it to handle the helper functions like analytics, logger, handling errors, etc.

What they call an "HOC" is basically a function (just a regular function, not React specific) that behaves like component factory. Meaning it outputs wrapped components that are the result of wrapping any inside-component of your choice. And your choice is specified with the "WrappedComponent" parameter. (Notice how their so-called "HOC" actually returns a class).
So I don't know why they called it an "HOC" tbh. It's just a function that spits out components. If anyone knows why I'd be interested in hearing the reason.
In essence their example is doing exactly what you're doing, but it's more flexible because WrappedComponent is being taken in as a parameter. So you can specify whatever you want. Your code, on the other hand, has your inside component hard coded into it.
To see the power of their example, let's say you have a file called insideComp.js containing:
import withSubscription from './withSubscription';
class InsideComp extends React.Component{
// define it
}
export default withSubscription(InsideComp);
And when you use insideComp in another file:
import myComp from './insideComp.js';
You're not actually importing insideComp, but rather the wrapped version that "withSubscription" had already spit out. Because remember your last line of insideComp.js is
export default withSubscription(InsideComp);
So your InsideComp was modified before it was exported

The second one is not a HOC.
They coin the word HOC from higher order functions. One example of a higher order function is a function that takes a function as an argument and returns another function.
Similarly, a HOC is a function that takes an component as argument and returns another component.
This does sound weird to me because a higher order component is not a react component; it is a function instead. I guess the reason they call it HOC is because:
A react component is a class, which is indeed a constructor function in JavaScript (except that functional components are simply functions). A HOC actually takes a function (a constructor function) and returns another function (another constructor function), so it is actually a higher order function if you think about it. Probably because it is in the react context and this is a pattern to transform components, they call it HOC.
As to the difference between the two styles you mentioned:
First one: you would use the first one to generate a class like MyComponnet = withSubscription(AnotherComponent, ...), and whenever you need it in a render call just write <MyComponent><MyComponent>
Second one: this is less common. Every time you need it in a render call, you would need to include the WithSubscription component as you mentioned in the description <WithSubscription component={BlogPost} selectData={(DataSource) => DataSource.getComments()} />

Is it possible to pass context into a component instantiated with ReactDOM.render?

TL;DR Given the following example code:
ReactDOM.render(<MyComponent prop1={someVar} />, someDomNode);
Is it possible to manually pass React context into the instance of MyComponent?
I know this sounds like a weird question given React's nature, but the use case is that I'm mixing React with Semantic UI (SUI) and this specific case is lazy-loading the contents of a SUI tooltip (the contents of the tooltip is a React component using the same code pattern as above) when the tooltip first displays. So it's not a React component being implicitly created by another React component, which seems to break context chain.
I'm wondering if I can manually keep the context chain going rather than having components that need to look for certain data in context AND props.
React version: 0.14.8

No. Before react 0.14 there was method React.withContext, but it was removed.
However you can do it by creating HoC component with context, it would be something like:
import React from 'react';
function createContextProvider(context){
class ContextProvider extends React.Component {
getChildContext() {
return context;
}
render() {
return this.props.children;
}
}
ContextProvider.childContextTypes = {};
Object.keys(context).forEach(key => {
ContextProvider.childContextTypes[key] = React.PropTypes.any.isRequired;
});
return ContextProvider;
}
And use it as following:
const ContextProvider = createContextProvider(context);
ReactDOM.render(
<ContextProvider>
<MyComponent prop1={someVar} />
</ContextProvider>,
someDomNode
);

In React 15 and earlier you can use ReactDOM.unstable_renderSubtreeIntoContainer instead of ReactDOM.render. The first argument is the component who's context you want to propagate (generally this)
In React 16 and later there's the "Portal" API: https://reactjs.org/docs/portals.html

How to access child component functions via refs

The docs for React state that component functions can be accessed by a parent component via refs. See: https://facebook.github.io/react/tips/expose-component-functions.html
I am attempting to use this in my application but run into an "undefined is not a function" error when the child function is called. I'm wondering if this has anything to do with using the ES6 format for React classes because I don't see any other differences between my code and the docs.
I have a Dialog component that looks like the following pseudocode. The Dialog has a "Save" button that calls save(), which needs to call the save() function in the child Content component. The Content component collects information from child form fields and performs the save.
class MyDialog extends React.Component {
save() {
this.refs.content.save(); <-- save() is undefined
}
render() {
return (
<Dialog action={this.save.bind(this)}>
<Content ref="content"/>
</Dialog>);
}
}
class Content extends React.Component {
save() {
// Get values from child fields
// and save the content
}
}
I could instead pass a prop (saveOnNextUpdate) down to Content and then execute save whenever it is true, but I would rather figure out how to get the method detailed in the React doc above to work.
Any ideas on how to get the doc approach to work or access the child component function in a different way?

Redux connect accepts an option parametre as the forth parameter. In this option parameter you can set the flag withRef to true. Then you can access functions to refs by using getWrappedInstance(). Like this:
class MyDialog extends React.Component {
save() {
this.refs.content.getWrappedInstance().save();
}
render() {
return (
<Dialog action={this.save.bind(this)}>
<Content ref="content"/>
</Dialog>);
}
}
class Content extends React.Component {
save() { ... }
}
function mapStateToProps(state) { ... }
module.exports = connect(mapStateToProps, null, null, { withRef: true })(Content);
Read more about it here: https://github.com/reactjs/react-redux/blob/master/docs/api.md#connectmapstatetoprops-mapdispatchtoprops-mergeprops-options
Worth reading this article about use of refs and consider if there's better approaches: https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/refs-and-the-dom.html#dont-overuse-refs

An alternative way to do this would be to use some other prop name (other than ref). I've found that this also works well if you're using a library like styled-components or emotion For example in a connected MyComponent:
<MyComponent
...
innerRef={(node) => { this.myRef = node; }}
/>

As it turns out, m90 was right -- this was a different issue entirely. I'm posting the solution in case someone runs into the same problem in the future.
My application is built with Redux, and the problem stems from using the react-redux connect function to connect a component to the store/global state. For some reason, exporting a component and connecting it to the store makes it impossible to access the functions inside of it. In order to get around this, I had to remove all use of global state from Content so that I could export it as a "dumb" component.
To be more clear, Content.js looked like this:
var connect = require('react-redux').connect;
class Content extends React.Component {
save() {
// Get values from child fields
// and save the content
// Use of this.props.stateObject
}
}
function mapStateToProps(state) {
const {
stateObject
} = state;
return {
stateObject
};
}
module.exports = connect(mapStateToProps)(Content);
Removing the use of global state (and therefore the use of connect and mapStateToProps allowed me to export the component using:
module.exports = Content;
Accessing this.refs.content.save() magically worked after doing this.