Search Input with useTimeout hook using TypeScript

Sviatoslav — Wed, 11 Jan 2023 18:23:43 +0000

Almost every project has some type of search. No matter if it's a local search in a list or you're sending server requests to get new results. In any case, it can be not really good to do searching on every user typing. So, let's create a search input with a special hook that helps us to solve this issue.

Setting up
Search component
Timeout
useTimeout hook
Full code

Setting up 💡

We won't install any additional packages, so you can start writing code for any of your projects. Although if you don't have TypeScript don't worry, just remove the typings. But I strongly recommend using it.

So, let's just use Create React App with TypeScript:

npx create-react-app search-input --template typescript
or
yarn create react-app search-input --template typescript

Search component 🔍

Let's begin with our base component called SearchInput.tsx. For now, it's a simple input with a name list.

SearchInput.tsx

const names = ['Stone, John', 'Priya, Ponnappa', 'Wong, Mia', 'Stanbrige, Peter', 'Lee-Walsh, Natalie']

function SearchInput() {
    return (
        <div>
            <input/>

            <ul>
                {names.map(name => <li key={name}>{name}</li>)}
            </ul>
        </div>
    );
}

The next step is to add an ability to search throw our list. We need a function and a state to store our filtered list. Let's add some code.

const [filteredList, setFilteredList] = useState<string[]>(names);

function handleFilter(event: React.ChangeEvent<HTMLInputElement>) {
    const { value } = event.target;
    const newList = names.filter(name => name.toLowerCase().includes(value.toLowerCase()));
    setFilteredList(newList);
}

Don't forget to add a prop function and change names variable.

<input onChange={handleFilter}/>

<ul>
    {filteredList.map(name => <li key={name}>{name}</li>)}
</ul>

Now, it works fine. It filters our list as expected.

But if you have a larger table or you need to ask a server for results it can bring some issues with performance. Let's upgrade our list to have some delay before searching.

We'll use a technique called debounce. It means that our filter function will be postponed until the time has passed since the last onChange call.

Timeout ⏱️

First, add a ref to save timeoutId. It's needed to clear a timeout if we've already had one.

const timeoutRef = useRef<ReturnType<typeof setTimeout>>();

Second, upgrading our filter function. First, as I've said, we need to clear the timeout, and the next step we create a new timeout with a filter inside.

function handleFilter(event: React.ChangeEvent<HTMLInputElement>) {
    const { value } = event.target;

    clearTimeout(timeoutRef.current);
    timeoutRef.current = setTimeout(() => {
        const newList = names.filter(name => name.toLowerCase().includes(value.toLowerCase()));

        setFilteredList(newList);
    }, 500);
}

One more important thing. Don't forget to add clearTimeout in useEffect callback in case if the component will be unmounted before setTimeout triggers.

useEffect(() => {
    return () => {
        clearTimeout(timeoutRef.current);
    }
}, []);

And now all the things work as we want them to! Let's have a look.

Great, but let's separate setTimeout in a hook in case we want to reuse it anywhere else.

useTimeout hook 🤛

No matter how you'll call it. In our example let's create a file useTimeout.ts and place all debounce code there.

useTimeout.ts

function useTimeout(ms = 500) {
    const timeoutRef = useRef<ReturnType<typeof setTimeout>>();

    useEffect(() => {
        return () => {
            clearTimeout(timeoutRef.current);
        }
    }, []);

    return (fnc: (...args: any[]) => void) => {
        if (timeoutRef.current) clearTimeout(timeoutRef.current);
        timeoutRef.current = setTimeout(fnc, ms);
    };
}

Also, as you can see, the hook can have any time to wait. By default, it'll be 500ms. This hook returns a higher-order function which takes a function as an argument. Inside this higher-order function is a code that we've already written before. And it's time to use this hook in our SearchInput.tsx.

First, we get a higher-order function.

const timeout = useTimeout();

When rewriting our filter function and removing all unnecessary code.

function handleFilter(event: React.ChangeEvent<HTMLInputElement>) {
    const { value } = event.target;

    timeout(() => {
        const newList = names.filter(name => name.toLowerCase().includes(value.toLowerCase()));
        setFilteredList(newList);
    });
}

Full code here: