React Hooks - Input loses focus when 1 character is typed in

Question

I'm playing with React Hooks - rewriting a form to use hook concepts. Everything works as expected except that once I type any 1 character into the input, the input loses focus.

I guess there is a problem that the outside of the component doesn't know about the internal changes in the component, but how do I resolve this issue?

Here is the useForm Hook:

import React, { useState } from "react";

export default function useForm(defaultState, label) {
  const [state, setState] = useState(defaultState);

  const FormComponent = () => (
    <form>
      <label htmlFor={label}>
        {label}
        <input
          type="text"
          id={label}
          value={state}
          placeholder={label}
          onChange={e => setState(e.target.value)}
        />
      </label>
    </form>
  );

  return [state, FormComponent, setState];
}

Here is the component that uses the Hook:

function App() {
  const [formValue, Form, setFormValue] = useForm("San Francisco, CA", "Location");

  return (
    <Fragment>
      <h1>{formValue}</h1>
      <Form />
    </Fragment>
  );
}

Answer 1

While the answer by Kais will solve the symptoms, it will leave the cause unaddressed. It will also fail if there are multiple inputs - which one should autofocus itself on rerender then?

The issue happens when you define a component (FormComponent) inside the scope of another function which is called each render of your App component. This gives you a completely new FormComponent each time your App component is rerendered and calls useState. That new component is then, well, without focus.

Personally I would feel against returning components from a hook. I would instead define a FormComponent component, and only return state from useForm state.

But, a working example closest to your original code could be:

// useForm.js
import React, { useState } from "react";

// Define the FormComponent outside of your useForm hook
const FormComponent = ({ setState, state, label }) => (
  <form>
    <label htmlFor={label}>
      {label}
      <input
        type="text"
        id={label}
        value={state}
        placeholder={label}
        onChange={e => setState(e.target.value)}
      />
    </label>
  </form>
);

export default function useForm(defaultState, label) {
  const [state, setState] = useState(defaultState);

  return [
    state,
    <FormComponent state={state} setState={setState} label={label} />,
    setState
  ];
}

// App.js
import useForm from "./useForm";

export default function App() {
  const [formValue, Form] = useForm("San Francisco, CA", "Location");

  return (
    <>
      <h1>{formValue}</h1>
      {Form}
    </>
  );
}

Here's a sandbox