React useEffect hook has a missing dependency warning

Question

Quick question, how do I fix the warning that I get when I try to use useEffect in my app. Here is my code:

 const userUrl = `${process.env.REACT_APP_API_URL}/${id}`;


const [newUser, setNewUser] = useState({
    name: "",
    email: "",
    status: "",
    gender: "",
  });

  useEffect(() => {
    if (id) {
      const getUser = async () => {
        try {
          const response = await axios.get(userUrl);
          const apiData = response.data.data;
          setNewUser({
            ...newUser,
            name: apiData.name,
            email: apiData.email,
            status: apiData.status,
            gender: apiData.gender,
          });
        } catch (err) {
          console.error(err);
        }
      };
      getUser();
    } else {
      setNewUser({
        ...newUser,
        status: "active",
        gender: "male",
      });
    }
  }, [userUrl, id]);

This is the full warning message: React Hook useEffect has a missing dependency: 'newUser'. Either include it or remove the dependency array. You can also do a functional update 'setNewUser(n => ...)' if you only need 'newUser' in the 'setNewUser' call

I tried adding the newUser inside the second parameter of the useEffect hook, but then I get the maximum depth error, so if anyone know how to fix this, I would gladly appreciate that.

Answer 1

Issue

The issue here is that you are referencing the newUser state within the useEffect callback, thus making it a dependency. But you can't unconditionally update any value that is a dependency as this leads to the render looping you see when you added newUser state as a dependency.

Solution

You should use a functional state update on the state updater so you can remove the outer newUser dependency. The functional update enqueues a state update and passes the previous state value to the callback that can be used to compute the next state value.

useEffect(() => {
  if (id) {
    const getUser = async () => {
      try {
        const response = await axios.get(userUrl);
        const { email, gender, name, status } = response.data.data;
        setNewUser(newUser => ({ // <-- previous state
          ...newUser,            // <-- shallow merge
          name,
          email,
          status,
          gender,
        }));
      } catch (err) {
        console.error(err);
      }
    };
    getUser();
  } else {
    setNewUser(newUser => ({     // <-- previous state
      ...newUser,                // <-- shallow merge
      status: "active",
      gender: "male",
    }));
  }
}, [userUrl, id]);