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Handling stale state in a React functional component during sequential API calls with useEffect

πŸ‘€ Views: 3 πŸ’¬ Answers: 1 πŸ“… Created: 2025-05-31
react useeffect state-management javascript

I'm learning this framework and I've been struggling with this for a few days now and could really use some help... I need some guidance on I'm stuck trying to After trying multiple solutions online, I still can't figure this out. Quick question that's been bugging me - I'm working with an scenario where my React component is using stale state values when making sequential API calls within a `useEffect`. I've set up the component to fetch user data and then fetch user posts based on that data. However, the state updates from the first API call don't seem to be reflecting in the second call. Here’s a simplified version of my code: ```javascript import React, { useEffect, useState } from 'react'; import axios from 'axios'; const UserPosts = () => { const [userId, setUserId] = useState(null); const [posts, setPosts] = useState([]); useEffect(() => { const fetchUser = async () => { const response = await axios.get('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users/1'); setUserId(response.data.id); }; fetchUser(); }, []); useEffect(() => { if (userId) { const fetchPosts = async () => { const response = await axios.get(`https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts?userId=${userId}`); setPosts(response.data); }; fetchPosts(); } }, [userId]); return ( <div> <h1>User Posts</h1> <ul> {posts.map(post => ( <li key={post.id}>{post.title}</li> ))} </ul> </div> ); }; export default UserPosts; ``` The question arises when I log `userId` before making the second API call. It always shows as `null` the first time the second `useEffect` runs, but I can see that `userId` is updated correctly in the state. I suspect it might be due to how React batches state updates. I've tried adding a log statement right after `setUserId(response.data.id);` and confirmed that it logs the correct ID, but the second effect runs before `userId` is updated. How can I ensure that the second API call waits for `userId` to be updated correctly? I've also checked that I'm using React 17.0.2 and axios 0.21.1, and my component renders correctly without any errors. Any insights would be greatly appreciated! My development environment is Windows. Any ideas what could be causing this? My development environment is Ubuntu. Am I missing something obvious? For reference, this is a production application. I appreciate any insights! I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. I recently upgraded to Javascript 3.9. Any help would be greatly appreciated!