Custom Hooks

Defining custom Hooks

Component's stateful logic can be extracted into usable function by creating custom Hooks.

Consider that we have a component which subscribes to an agent and displays the messages sent to it.

use yew::{function_component, html, use_effect, use_state, Callback};
use yew_agent::Bridged;
// EventBus is an implementation yew_agent::Agent
use website_test::agents::EventBus;


#[function_component(ShowMessages)]
pub fn show_messages() -> Html {
    let state = use_state(Vec::new);

    {
        let state = state.clone();
        use_effect(move || {
            let producer = EventBus::bridge(Callback::from(move |msg| {
                let mut messages = (*state).clone();
                messages.push(msg);
                state.set(messages)
            }));

            || drop(producer)
        });
    }

    let output = state.iter().map(|it| html! { <p>{ it }</p> });
    html! { <div>{ for output }</div> }
}

There's one problem with this code: the logic can't be reused by another component. If we build another component which keeps track of the messages, instead of copying the code we can move the logic into a custom hook.

We'll start by creating a new function called use_subscribe. The use_ prefix conventionally denotes that a function is a hook. This function will take no arguments and return Rc<RefCell<Vec<String>>>.

use std::{cell::RefCell, rc::Rc};

fn use_subscribe() -> Rc<RefCell<Vec<String>>> {
    todo!()
}

This is a simple hook which can be created by combining other hooks. For this example, we'll two pre-defined hooks. We'll use use_state hook to store the Vec for messages, so they persist between component re-renders. We'll also use use_effect to subscribe to the EventBus Agent so the subscription can be tied to component's lifecycle.

use std::collections::HashSet;
use yew::{use_effect, use_state, Callback};
use yew_agent::Bridged;
// EventBus is an implementation yew_agent::Agent
use website_test::agents::EventBus;

fn use_subscribe() -> Vec<String> {
    let state = use_state(Vec::new);

    let effect_state = state.clone();

    use_effect(move || {
        let producer = EventBus::bridge(Callback::from(move |msg| {
            let mut messages = (*effect_state).clone();
            messages.push(msg);
            effect_state.set(messages)
        }));
        || drop(producer)
    });

    (*state).clone()
}

Although this approach works in almost all cases, it can't be used to write primitive hooks like the pre-defined hooks we've been using already

Writing primitive hooks

use_hook function is used to write such hooks. View the docs on docs.rs for the documentation and hooks directory to see implementations of pre-defined hooks.