react-timer-mixin

What is react-timer-mixin?

The react-timer-mixin package provides a mixin for React components to manage timers (setTimeout, setInterval, etc.) in a more convenient and less error-prone way. It helps in automatically clearing timers when the component unmounts, preventing potential memory leaks and ensuring that timers do not continue to run after the component is no longer in use.

What are react-timer-mixin's main functionalities?

setTimeout

This feature allows you to use setTimeout within a React component. The timer will be automatically cleared when the component unmounts, preventing memory leaks.

import TimerMixin from 'react-timer-mixin';
import React from 'react';
import { View, Text } from 'react-native';

const MyComponent = React.createClass({
  mixins: [TimerMixin],

  componentDidMount() {
    this.setTimeout(() => {
      console.log('Timeout triggered!');
    }, 1000);
  },

  render() {
    return (
      <View>
        <Text>Check the console after 1 second.</Text>
      </View>
    );
  }
});

setInterval

This feature allows you to use setInterval within a React component. The interval will be automatically cleared when the component unmounts, ensuring that the interval does not continue to run after the component is no longer in use.

import TimerMixin from 'react-timer-mixin';
import React from 'react';
import { View, Text } from 'react-native';

const MyComponent = React.createClass({
  mixins: [TimerMixin],

  componentDidMount() {
    this.setInterval(() => {
      console.log('Interval triggered!');
    }, 1000);
  },

  render() {
    return (
      <View>
        <Text>Check the console every second.</Text>
      </View>
    );
  }
});

clearTimeout and clearInterval

This feature demonstrates how to manually clear timeouts and intervals using clearTimeout and clearInterval methods provided by the mixin. This can be useful if you need to clear timers before the component unmounts.

import TimerMixin from 'react-timer-mixin';
import React from 'react';
import { View, Text, Button } from 'react-native';

const MyComponent = React.createClass({
  mixins: [TimerMixin],

  componentDidMount() {
    this.timeoutId = this.setTimeout(() => {
      console.log('Timeout triggered!');
    }, 1000);

    this.intervalId = this.setInterval(() => {
      console.log('Interval triggered!');
    }, 1000);
  },

  clearTimers() {
    this.clearTimeout(this.timeoutId);
    this.clearInterval(this.intervalId);
  },

  render() {
    return (
      <View>
        <Text>Check the console for timer messages.</Text>
        <Button title="Clear Timers" onPress={this.clearTimers} />
      </View>
    );
  }
});

Other packages similar to react-timer-mixin

react-use

The react-use package is a collection of essential React Hooks, including hooks for managing timers such as useTimeout and useInterval. Unlike react-timer-mixin, which uses mixins, react-use leverages modern React hooks, making it more suitable for functional components.

use-interval

The use-interval package provides a custom React hook for setting up intervals in functional components. It offers a simple API for managing intervals and is a good alternative to react-timer-mixin for projects using functional components and hooks.

react-timer-hook

The react-timer-hook package provides a set of hooks for managing timers, including useTimer, useStopwatch, and useCountdown. It is designed for use with functional components and offers more specialized timer functionalities compared to react-timer-mixin.

README

react-timer-mixin

Using bare setTimeout, setInterval, setImmediate and requestAnimationFrame calls is very dangerous because if you forget to cancel the request before the component is unmounted, you risk the callback throwing an exception.

If you include TimerMixin, then you can replace your calls to setTimeout(fn, 500) with this.setTimeout(fn, 500) (just prepend this.) and everything will be properly cleaned up for you.

Installation

Install the module directly from npm:

npm install react-timer-mixin

Example

var React = require('react');
var TimerMixin = require('react-timer-mixin');

var Component = React.createClass({
  mixins: [TimerMixin],
  componentDidMount() {
    this.setTimeout(
      () => { console.log('I do not leak!'); },
      500
    );
  }
});