React 18: Custom Hook for Form Handling Causes advanced patterns with Nested State Updates
I'm working on a personal project and I'm relatively new to this, so bear with me. I'm working with an scenario with a custom hook that I created for managing form state in a React 18 application. The hook is designed to handle nested state updates, but I'm running into unexpected behavior where the form values are not being updated as intended. Specifically, when I update a nested field, the outer state does not reflect these changes correctly, resulting in stale data. Here is the code for my custom hook: ```javascript import { useState } from 'react'; const useForm = (initialValues) => { const [formValues, setFormValues] = useState(initialValues); const handleChange = (e) => { const { name, value } = e.target; setFormValues((prevValues) => ({ ...prevValues, [name]: value, })); }; const handleNestedChange = (parentName, childName, value) => { setFormValues((prevValues) => ({ ...prevValues, [parentName]: { ...prevValues[parentName], [childName]: value, }, })); }; return { formValues, handleChange, handleNestedChange }; }; ``` I use the hook in my component like this: ```javascript import React from 'react'; import useForm from './useForm'; const MyForm = () => { const { formValues, handleChange, handleNestedChange } = useForm({ user: { name: '', email: '' }, }); return ( <form> <input type="text" name="name" value={formValues.user.name} onChange={handleChange} /> <input type="email" name="email" value={formValues.user.email} onChange={(e) => handleNestedChange('user', 'email', e.target.value)} /> <button type="submit">Submit</button> </form> ); }; ``` The question arises when I try to update the email field. The value in `formValues.user.email` remains unchanged unless I trigger a change in the `name` field first. I suspect this is due to how I'm managing the state and possibly not correctly recognizing the nested updates. I've tried logging the state updates and ensuring that my `handleNestedChange` function is called correctly, but I still get stale values for the nested fields. The console doesn't show any errors, but the behavior is definitely not what I expect. Is there a better way to handle nested state updates in a custom hook, or is there something I'm missing in my implementation? Any insights would be greatly appreciated! For context: I'm using Javascript on Windows. Thanks in advance! For context: I'm using Javascript on macOS. Has anyone else encountered this?