The library provides a flexible and powerful mechanism for event management within React Native applications. It allows components to subscribe to specific events and react to them, facilitating communication between dispersed components throughout the application without the need for prop drilling or complex contexts. It offers functionalities for handling both global events, shared across the entire application, and private events, limited to the scope of an individual component, thus offering great versatility in managing communication between components.

React Native Events Hook logo

install

$ npm install react-native-events-hooks --save

Global and Private Event Handling

Manejo de Eventos Globales y Privados

Enables components to listen to and emit both global events, which are accessible throughout the entire application, and private events, confined to the emitting and listening components, providing precise and efficient event management.

Subscription Management

Offers a straightforward API for components to subscribe to events, enabling them to react dynamically to changes or actions across the application.

Automatic Cleanup

Incorporates automatic listener cleanup mechanisms to prevent memory leaks, especially for private events, ensuring components only listen to relevant events during their lifecycle.

Implementation Flexibility

The library's design ensures easy integration into existing projects, allowing developers to implement sophisticated event-driven behaviors with minimal code changes.

Unique Listener IDs

Generates unique IDs for event listeners, simplifying the subscription and unsubscription process and enhancing the manageability of event listeners.

useEvents

useEvents is a hook that provides a list of methods to operate with our events.

function MyBox({ boxId }) {
	const {
		listen,
		unlisten,
		emit,
	} = useEvents();
	...

listen and listenPrivate

To subscribe to either global or private events, respectively. Callbacks registered through these methods will be invoked when the corresponding event is emitted. Both methods return a listenerId. It's important to understand that when performing listen or listenPrivate, it should be done within a useEffect to prevent multiple subscriptions to the same event.

useEffect(() => {
	const listenerId = listen('backgroundChage', (payload) => {
		if (payload.boxId === boxId) {
			setBackgroundColor(payload.backgroundColor);
		}
	});

	const listener2Id = listen('resetBoxState', () => setBackgroundColor('#efefef'));

	return () => {
		unlisten('backgroundChage', listenerId);
		unlisten('resetBoxState', listener2Id);
	};
}, []);

emit and emitPrivate

export default function App() {
	const {
		emit,
	} = useEvents();

	return (
		<Button
			style={styles.btn}
			title="Reset"
			onPress={() => emit('resetBoxState')}
		/>
	);
}

unlisten and unlistenPrivate

These methods remove listeners from an event. Both the eventName and listenerId are required.

useEffect(() => {
	const listenerId = listen('backgroundChage', (payload) => {
		if (payload.boxId === boxId) {
			setBackgroundColor(payload.backgroundColor);
		}
	});

	const listener2Id = listen('resetBoxState', () => setBackgroundColor('#efefef'));

	return () => {
		unlisten('backgroundChage', listenerId);
		unlisten('resetBoxState', listener2Id);
	};
}, []);

removeAllListenersByEvent

Removes all listeners for a given eventName.

getAllEventsName

This method allows us to retrieve all the events registered up to the moment.

import { getAllEventsName } from 'react-native-events-hook';

Implementation Highlights

Global and Private Events: The distinction between global and private events allows components to handle events specifically within their own scope or share events across the application as needed.
State Management for Private Events: Using useState to store private events enables components to have their own set of listeners that do not impact or get affected by other components unless the information is explicitly shared.

Recommended Use

This library is ideal for React applications that require complex management of communication between components, especially in cases where prop drilling or excessive use of contexts becomes impractical. It is particularly useful in large and modular applications, where the separation of concerns and efficiency in communication between components are critical for maintenance and scalability.

Ejemplo

The provided example illustrates how to use useEvents to create an interactive dynamic where multiple "boxes" can change color randomly or reset to an initial state. This demonstrates the power of react-native-events-hooks to facilitate complex interactions between components efficiently and with reduced code.

Example

import {
	useState,
	useEffect,
} from 'react';

import {
	View,
	StyleSheet,
	Text,
	Button,
} from 'react-native';

import {
	useEvents,
} from 'react-native-events-hooks';

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
	container: {
		borderWidth: 1,
		borderColor: '#FF0000',
		flex: 1,
		marginTop: 40,
	},
	btn: {
		marginTop: 10,
		backgroundColor: '#333333',
	},
	boxes: {
		flex: 1,
		flexDirection: 'row',
		alignItems: 'center',
		alignContent: 'center',
		flexWrap: 'wrap',
		padding: 4,
	},
	box: {
		marginVertical: 2,
		marginHorizontal: 2,
		borderWidth: 1,
		borderColor: 'green',
		width: 50,
		height: 50,
		alignItems: 'center',
		padding: 4,
	},
});

function MyBox({ boxId }) {
	const {
		listen,
		unlisten,
	} = useEvents();
	const [backgroundColor, setBackgroundColor] = useState('#efefef');

	useEffect(() => {
		const listenerId = listen('backgroundChage', (payload) => {
			if (payload.boxId === boxId) {
				setBackgroundColor(payload.backgroundColor);
			}
		});

		const listener2Id = listen('resetBoxState', () => setBackgroundColor('#efefef'));

		return () => {
			unlisten('backgroundChage', listenerId);
			unlisten('resetBoxState', listener2Id);
		};
	}, []);

	console.info('rendering box: ', boxId);
	return (
		<View
			style={[styles.box, { backgroundColor }]}
		>
			<Text>{`${boxId}`}</Text>
		</View>
	);
}

export default function App() {
	const [totalBoxes] = useState(60);
	const [runRandomColors, setBackgroundColors] = useState(false);

	const {
		emit,
	} = useEvents();

	useEffect(() => {
		const intervalId = setInterval(() => {
			if (!runRandomColors) return;
			emit('backgroundChage', {
				backgroundColor: `#${Math.round(Math.random() * 16777215).toString(16).toUpperCase()}`,
				boxId: Math.round(Math.random() * (totalBoxes - 1)),
			});
		}, 300);

		return () => clearInterval(intervalId);
	}, [runRandomColors]);

	return (
		<View style={styles.container}>
			<Button
				style={styles.btn}
				title={`${runRandomColors ? 'Randoms enabled' : 'Randoms disabled'}`}
				onPress={() => setBackgroundColors((prev) => !prev)}
			/>
			<Button
				style={styles.btn}
				title="Reset"
				onPress={() => emit('resetBoxState')}
			/>
			<View style={styles.boxes}>
				{[...Array(totalBoxes)].map((a, index) => (
					<MyBox
						key={`box-${index}`}
						boxId={index}
					/>
				))}
			</View>
		</View>
	);
}

Changelog

Mar 25, 2024. Version 1.0.2
- Added English documentation.

Version 2.0.0

Date: July 29, 2025
Description: Major update to integrate Expo's EventEmitter module instead of the custom event handling system, while maintaining compatibility with the existing API.

Changes

Replacement of custom event storage system:
- Removed the use of EventStore (registeredEvents object) in favor of Expo's EventEmitter for managing global and private events.
- Created two EventEmitter instances: globalEmitter for global events and privateEmitterRef for component-scoped private events.
Listener management:
- Replaced manual listenerId generation and array storage with EventEmitter subscriptions (addListener and remove).
- Used a Map (listenerIdsRef) to track subscriptions and enable removal of specific listeners with unlisten and unlistenPrivate.
Unchanged API:
- Preserved the useEvents hook interface (listen, listenPrivate, emit, emitPrivate, unlisten, unlistenPrivate, removeAllListenersByEvent) to ensure compatibility with existing code.
Event cleanup:
- Implemented automatic cleanup of all private listeners on component unmount using useEffect and removeAllListeners.
- Global listeners are managed explicitly via unlisten or removeAllListenersByEvent.
Limitation in getAllEventsName:
- Since EventEmitter does not natively provide a way to list event names, the getAllEventsName function returns an empty array. To restore this functionality, manual tracking of event names can be implemented.
Performance improvements:
- Using EventEmitter optimizes event handling in React Native/Expo, offering better performance compared to the custom system.
Retention of error validation:
- Kept error checks for eventName and eventCallback to maintain original behavior.

Upgrade Notes

Users must ensure they are using an Expo version that includes EventEmitter (available in recent Expo SDK versions).
Thoroughly test the updated library, especially the private/global event separation and cleanup logic.
If getAllEventsName is critical, consider adding a Set to manually track event names.

MIT License

Keywords

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Package last updated on 29 Jul 2025

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Install

react-native-events-hooks