State is empty in the first render, causing an error. How to solve this?

Question

I'm trying to show a barCode for my cardNumber like below:

import "./Home.css";
import React, { useState, useEffect, useRef } from "react";
import axios from "axios";
import { useBarcode } from "react-barcodes";

const Cards: React.FC = () => {
  
 const [cardNumber, setCardNumber] = useState("");
 const [content, setContent] = useState("");

//I'm adding a 0 at the beginning of cardNumber, because I need to do so
 const cardNumberwithDigits = "" + 0 + cardNumber;

  const { inputRef } = useBarcode({
    value: cardNumberwithDigits 
    options: {
      background: "#dae2e4",
      format: "EAN8",
      text: cardNumber,
    },
  });


  //get the cardNumber
  useEffect(() => {
    axios
      .get("/cards/xx")
      .then(
        (response) => {
          setCardNumber(response.data.cardId);
        },
        (error) => {
          const _content =
            (error.response && error.response.data) ||
            error.message ||
            error.toString();

          setContent(_content);
        }
      );
  }, []);


  return (
    <React.Fragment>
      <IonPage className="ion-page" id="main-content">
        <IonContent className="ion-padding">
         
            <div>
              <svg ref={inputRef} />
            </div>   
   
        </IonContent>
      </IonPage>
    </React.Fragment>
  );
};

export default Cards;

The problem is that cardNumber is initially empty in the first render of Cards.tsx, so I've got the error: Error: "0" is not a valid input for e because cardNumber is initially "" and after concatenating with 0, cardNumberwithDigits is "0", which is not a valid value for barCode. How can I solve the issue and get directly the value of cardNumber, avoiding the cases when it is empty or 0?

Answer 1

Update:

I found the solution. It seems to be an issue of format. "0" is an invalid input for format EAN8 but not for format CODE128 , so I will be using a ternary expression for this case. Every time cardNumberwithDigits !== "0" use format EAN8 , otherwise use format CODE128.

format:
        cardNumberwithDigits !== "0"
          ? "EAN8"
          : "CODE128",