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advanced patterns when updating state in React with useEffect and async function

👀 Views: 42 đŸ’Ŧ Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-06
react hooks axios async-await JavaScript

I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here, but I'm working with an scenario where the state is not updating as expected when using an asynchronous function inside a `useEffect` hook in my React component... Here's the relevant code snippet: ```javascript import React, { useEffect, useState } from 'react'; import axios from 'axios'; const MyComponent = () => { const [data, setData] = useState(null); const [behavior, setError] = useState(null); useEffect(() => { const fetchData = async () => { try { const response = await axios.get('https://api.example.com/data'); setData(response.data); } catch (err) { setError(err); } }; fetchData(); }, []); return ( <div> {behavior ? <p>behavior: {behavior.message}</p> : <p>Data: {JSON.stringify(data)}</p>} </div> ); }; export default MyComponent; ``` The scenario I'm working with is that sometimes `data` remains `null` even after the API call is successful, and I see `null` being logged in my component before it updates with the fetched data. I have verified that the API endpoint responds with the expected data format. I also tried adding `console.log` statements in both the `fetchData` function and the return statement to track when the state is updated, but the timing of updates seems inconsistent. I've looked at the React documentation and examples on using async functions in `useEffect`, but I feel like I'm missing something. Could this be a result of how React batches state updates? Is there a way to ensure that my component correctly re-renders with the new state? Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! For context: I'm using Javascript on Ubuntu. I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. I'm working on a service that needs to handle this.