Jun 18, 2020

Introducing useAbortableEffect: a simple React hook for running abortable effects

by Lukáš Mladý

Project link: https://github.com/closeio/use-abortable-effect

We’re excited to introduce the newest addition to our frontend-related open source projects. useAbortableEffect is a super simple React hook for running abortable effects based on the AbortController API.

Check the live DEMO.

We are taking advantage of this tiny library mainly in our Pipeline View and Reporting features (and numerous other features), where there are multiple ways to filter and view the data. Using useAbortableEffect, we can safely fetch all the necessary data with support of aborting previous unfinished requests and also aborting whenever the user navigates away from the page. No more memory leaks with setState happening after component unmount!

Summary

Extremely lightweight (less than 500B minzipped).
It uses the AbortController API and it is compatible with the fetch API.
If a browser does not support the AbortController API then the hook behaves exactly like a regular useEffect hook. See Can I Use for browser support overview.
No other 3rd-party dependencies.

Installation

yarn add @closeio/use-abortable-effect

API

The API of useAbortableEffect hook is pretty straightforward.

It takes an effect function and it returns a React ref to an AbortController instance.

API is compatible with useEffect, where the effect function you pass-in accepts an AbortSignal instance as a param and you can return a cleanup function that accepts an AbortController instance.
Supports abortable fetch requests.
Supports running custom operations/computations that can be easily aborted.
Auto-aborts effects on re-run (or component unmount), unless you provide a custom cleanup function.

// Regular React effect hook.
useEffect(() => {
  // do something
  return () => {
    /* cleanup */
  };
}, [deps]);

// An abortable effect hook.
const abortControllerRef = useAbortableEffect(
  (abortSignal) => {
    // do something
    return (abortController) => {
      /* do cleanup, you should probably abort */
    };
  },
  [deps]
);

Examples

Abortable `fetch` requests

import React from 'react';
import useAbortableEffect from '@closeio/use-abortable-effect';

export default function MyAbortableFetchComponent() {
  const abortControllerRef = useAbortableEffect((abortSignal) =>
    fetch(url, { signal: abortSignal })
      .then(/* … */)
      .catch((rejection) => {
        if (rejection.name !== 'AbortError') {
          // Re-throw or handle non-abort rejection in another way.
          return Promise.reject(rejection);
        }
      })
  );

  const handleManualAbort = () => abortControllerRef.current.abort();
  // …
}

Arbitrary computation that can be aborted

import React from 'react';
import useAbortableEffect from '@closeio/use-abortable-effect';

export default function MyAbortableComputationComponent() {
  const abortControllerRef = useAbortableEffect(abortSignal => {
    new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      // Should be a DOMException per spec.
      const abortRejection = new DOMException(
        'Calculation aborted by the user',
        'AbortError',
      );
      // Handle when abort was requested before starting the computation.
      if (abortSignal.aborted) {
        return reject(abortRejection);
      }
      // This simulates an expensive computation.
      const timeout = setTimeout(() => resolve(1), 5000);
      // Listen for abort request.
      abortSignal.addEventListener('abort', () => {
        clearTimeout(timeout);
        reject(abortRejection);
      });
    })
      .then(/* … */)
      .catch(rejection => {
        if (rejection.name !== 'AbortError') {
          // Re-throw or handle non-abort rejection in another way.
          return Promise.reject(rejection);
        }
      }),
  });

  const handleManualAbort = () => abortControllerRef.current.abort();
  // …
}

Custom cleanup function

import React from 'react';
import useAbortableEffect from '@closeio/use-abortable-effect';

export default function MyCustomCleanupComponent() {
  const [gotAborted, setGotAborted] = useState(false);
  const abortControllerRef = useAbortableEffect((abortSignal) => {
    fetch(url, { signal: abortSignal })
      .then(/* … */)
      .catch((rejection) => {
        if (rejection.name !== 'AbortError') {
          // Re-throw or handle non-abort rejection in another way.
          return Promise.reject(rejection);
        }
      });
    // Just return a function like in `useEffect`, with the difference that you
    // get the abort controller (not a ref) as a param.
    return (controller) => {
      controller.abort();
      setGotAborted(true);
    };
  });

  const handleManualAbort = () => abortControllerRef.current.abort();
  // …
}

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