react native state not changing

Question

i want to pass the string from asyncstorage to a state variable using hooks, but it doesn't work, trying for hours but still doesn't work. here is the code:

const [cartitems, cartitemsfunc] = useState('');

const d = async () => {
let items = await AsyncStorage.getItem('items');
console.log('items from cart:' + items);
cartitemsfunc(items);
console.log('items from cart2:' + cartitems);
 };

d();

when i try console logging cartitems it logs an empty string in the console,but items logs out the string

can someone please tell me where i went wrong

thanks in advance!!!

Answer 1

As mentioned in the comments and link supplied, useState is asynchronous so setting a value and immediately reading it in the following line will not yield consistent result:

cartitemsfunc(items); // async call
console.log('items from cart2:' + cartitems); // cartitems not updated yet

It is important to also understand that whenever you update state using useState, the component will render again. If you have a method call in the body of the app it will be run everytime you update state. So what you have is a scenario where you are making a call to update state, but the method is being executed and ends up overwriting your changes.

const d = async () => {
let items = await AsyncStorage.getItem('items');
console.log('items from cart:' + items);
cartitemsfunc(items);
console.log('items from cart2:' + cartitems);
 };

d(); // this will run every time the component renders - after you update state

If you only need the value at initial render, then call the method from useEffect and set the dependency chain to [] so it only runs once at first render, and not every time state is updated.

Below is an example that demonstrates getting/setting values from localStorage and also updating the state directly.

CodeSandbox Demo

import React, { useState, useEffect } from "react";
import AsyncStorage from "@react-native-community/async-storage";
import "./styles.css";

export default function App() {
  const [cartItems, setCartItems] = useState(null);

  const setLSItems = async () => {
    await AsyncStorage.setItem(
      "items",
      JSON.stringify([{ id: "foo", quantity: 1 }, { id: "bar", quantity: 2 }])
    );

    getLSItems(); // or setCartItems("Foo");
  };

  const clearLSItems = async () => {
    await AsyncStorage.removeItem("items");

    getLSItems(); // or or setCartItems(null);
  };

  const getLSItems = async () => {
    const items = await AsyncStorage.getItem("items");

    setCartItems(JSON.parse(items));
  };

  // bypass using local storage
  const setCartItemsDirectly = () => {
    setCartItems([{ id: "baz", quantity: 3 }]);
  };

  useEffect(() => {
    getLSItems();
  }, []); // run once at start

  return (
    <div className="App">
      <div>
        <button onClick={setLSItems}>Set LS Items</button>
        <button onClick={clearLSItems}>Clear LS Items</button>
      </div>
      <div>
        <button onClick={setCartItemsDirectly}>Set Cart Items Directly</button>
      </div>
      <hr />
      {cartItems &&
        cartItems.map((item, index) => (
          <div key={index}>
            item: {item.id} | quantity: {item.quantity}
          </div>
        ))}
    </div>
  );
}