When you fire a Promise it might take a few seconds before it resolves and by that time user might have navigated to another place in your app. So when Promise resolves setState is executed on unmounted component and you get an error - just like in your case. This may also cause memory leaks.
That's why it is best to move some of your asynchronous logic out of components.
Otherwise, you will need to somehow cancel your Promise. Alternatively - as a last resort technique (it's an antipattern) - you can keep a variable to check whether the component is still mounted:
componentDidMount(){
this.mounted = true;
this.props.fetchData().then((response) => {
if(this.mounted) {
this.setState({ data: response })
}
})
}
componentWillUnmount(){
this.mounted = false;
}
I will stress that again - this is an antipattern but may be sufficient in your case (just like they did with Formik implementation).
A similar discussion on GitHub
EDIT:
This is probably how would I solve the same problem (having nothing but React) with Hooks:
OPTION A:
import React, { useState, useEffect } from "react";
export default function Page() {
const value = usePromise("https://something.com/api/");
return (
<p>{value ? value : "fetching data..."}</p>
);
}
function usePromise(url) {
const [value, setState] = useState(null);
useEffect(() => {
let isMounted = true; // track whether component is mounted
request.get(url)
.then(result => {
if (isMounted) {
setState(result);
}
});
return () => {
// clean up
isMounted = false;
};
}, []); // only on "didMount"
return value;
}
OPTION B: Alternatively with useRef which behaves like a static property of a class which means it doesn't make component rerender when it's value changes:
function usePromise2(url) {
const isMounted = React.useRef(true)
const [value, setState] = useState(null);
useEffect(() => {
return () => {
isMounted.current = false;
};
}, []);
useEffect(() => {
request.get(url)
.then(result => {
if (isMounted.current) {
setState(result);
}
});
}, []);
return value;
}
// or extract it to custom hook:
function useIsMounted() {
const isMounted = React.useRef(true)
useEffect(() => {
return () => {
isMounted.current = false;
};
}, []);
return isMounted; // returning "isMounted.current" wouldn't work because we would return unmutable primitive
}
Example: https://codesandbox.io/s/86n1wq2z8
Answer from Tomasz Mularczyk on Stack OverflowWhen you fire a Promise it might take a few seconds before it resolves and by that time user might have navigated to another place in your app. So when Promise resolves setState is executed on unmounted component and you get an error - just like in your case. This may also cause memory leaks.
That's why it is best to move some of your asynchronous logic out of components.
Otherwise, you will need to somehow cancel your Promise. Alternatively - as a last resort technique (it's an antipattern) - you can keep a variable to check whether the component is still mounted:
componentDidMount(){
this.mounted = true;
this.props.fetchData().then((response) => {
if(this.mounted) {
this.setState({ data: response })
}
})
}
componentWillUnmount(){
this.mounted = false;
}
I will stress that again - this is an antipattern but may be sufficient in your case (just like they did with Formik implementation).
A similar discussion on GitHub
EDIT:
This is probably how would I solve the same problem (having nothing but React) with Hooks:
OPTION A:
import React, { useState, useEffect } from "react";
export default function Page() {
const value = usePromise("https://something.com/api/");
return (
<p>{value ? value : "fetching data..."}</p>
);
}
function usePromise(url) {
const [value, setState] = useState(null);
useEffect(() => {
let isMounted = true; // track whether component is mounted
request.get(url)
.then(result => {
if (isMounted) {
setState(result);
}
});
return () => {
// clean up
isMounted = false;
};
}, []); // only on "didMount"
return value;
}
OPTION B: Alternatively with useRef which behaves like a static property of a class which means it doesn't make component rerender when it's value changes:
function usePromise2(url) {
const isMounted = React.useRef(true)
const [value, setState] = useState(null);
useEffect(() => {
return () => {
isMounted.current = false;
};
}, []);
useEffect(() => {
request.get(url)
.then(result => {
if (isMounted.current) {
setState(result);
}
});
}, []);
return value;
}
// or extract it to custom hook:
function useIsMounted() {
const isMounted = React.useRef(true)
useEffect(() => {
return () => {
isMounted.current = false;
};
}, []);
return isMounted; // returning "isMounted.current" wouldn't work because we would return unmutable primitive
}
Example: https://codesandbox.io/s/86n1wq2z8
The friendly people at React recommend wrapping your fetch calls/promises in a cancelable promise. While there is no recommendation in that documentation to keep the code separate from the class or function with the fetch, this seems advisable because other classes and functions are likely to need this functionality, code duplication is an anti-pattern, and regardless the lingering code should be disposed of or canceled in componentWillUnmount(). As per React, you can call cancel() on the wrapped promise in componentWillUnmount to avoid setting state on an unmounted component.
The provided code would look something like these code snippets if we use React as a guide:
const makeCancelable = (promise) => {
let hasCanceled_ = false;
const wrappedPromise = new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
promise.then(
val => hasCanceled_ ? reject({isCanceled: true}) : resolve(val),
error => hasCanceled_ ? reject({isCanceled: true}) : reject(error)
);
});
return {
promise: wrappedPromise,
cancel() {
hasCanceled_ = true;
},
};
};
const cancelablePromise = makeCancelable(fetch('LINK HERE'));
constructor(props){
super(props);
this.state = {
isLoading: true,
dataSource: [{
name: 'loading...',
id: 'loading',
}]
}
}
componentDidMount(){
cancelablePromise.
.then((response) => response.json())
.then((responseJson) => {
this.setState({
isLoading: false,
dataSource: responseJson,
}, () => {
});
})
.catch((error) =>{
console.error(error);
});
}
componentWillUnmount() {
cancelablePromise.cancel();
}
---- EDIT ----
I have found the given answer may not be quite correct by following the issue on GitHub. Here is one version that I use which works for my purposes:
export const makeCancelableFunction = (fn) => {
let hasCanceled = false;
return {
promise: (val) => new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
if (hasCanceled) {
fn = null;
} else {
fn(val);
resolve(val);
}
}),
cancel() {
hasCanceled = true;
}
};
};
The idea was to help the garbage collector free up memory by making the function or whatever you use null.
How important is it to cancel network requests when a component unmounts?
react native - abort fetch when component unmount - Stack Overflow
Cancelling promises and network calls on components unmounting?
Do I need to manage fetch cancellations? Or does React handle this?
If a fetch request keeps running after a component has unmounted, we are wasting resources because we don't have a use for the return value of that request anymore (since the component showing the data was removed).
I'm trying to understand if request cancellation is considered merely an "optimization" or absolutely important. Assuming that the request doesn't do anything particularly expensive, just a database request on the backend.
Also, what about POST and PATCH requests? Don't we wanna finish these even if we navigated away?
And what about libraries like React-query and SWR that cache the response? Does the caching make it okay to load an unused response, considering that we can reuse it later to show cached data?