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How to build a search bar in React

Emma Goto 🍙 on November 05, 2020

A search bar is a great way to make content on your website discoverable. In this tutorial, we’ll be building an accessible search bar component us...

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ItsThatHexagonGuy • Nov 6 '20

Hello Emma! Loved the accessibility topics, I love axe and I was happy you mentioned it :)

Quick nit: Don't pass setters to child components, this allows a child component to freely mutate the state of the parent. Children should only react to changes and then mutate the state of a parent accordingly. That way the data flow is predictable.

Emma Goto 🍙 • Nov 6 '20

Hi, thanks for the feedback - do you have suggestions on how you would approach this instead?

ItsThatHexagonGuy • Nov 6 '20 • Edited

First off what you did wasn't wrong, with that in mind read the following from the React docs:

There should be a single “source of truth” for any data that changes in a React application. Usually, the state is first added to the component that needs it for rendering. Then, if other components also need it, you can lift it up to their closest common ancestor. Instead of trying to sync the state between different components, you should rely on the top-down data flow.

Lifting state involves writing more “boilerplate” code than two-way binding approaches, but as a benefit, it takes less work to find and isolate bugs.

So, the idea is to only have the parent have full control over the state, the child should receive the parent's state and control to that state as props. This way if there's a bug, you always know where to look for - the parent. You can grant control to the state via props by wrapping the setter in a function in the parent. Doing so will also allow you to control how the child mutates the parent's state too.

TLDR: Wrapping the setter in a function and passing it as a prop, then calling it in the child makes it look like the parent is changing the state, not the child.

Emma Goto 🍙 • Nov 6 '20

Makes sense, thanks for the detailed explanation :)

Stepan Zubashev • Nov 6 '20

Mydrax:

const [searchValue, setSearchValue] = useState('');

// 1
return <SearchInput onChange={setSearchValue}/>

// 2
const onChange = (newValue: string) => {
  setSearchValue(newValue);
};

return <SearchInput onChange={setSearchValue}/>;

Do you mean this? I think it's just another one level of bureaucracy. The only difference is that you cannot do this with the wrapper:

onChange(prevValue => ...)

But if you use TypeScript and will declare prop-type like:

onChange: (newValue: stirng): void

you would not be able to do it anyway

I think it's more than "okay" to pass setters below the tree. And it doesn't violate top-down principle. The parent component in both cases is the only source of truth. And the only way to change the state is to use those tools that parent components provide to its children.

P.S. also if you're interested in strong performance you will wrap you wrapper by another wrapper (useCallback) :)

Pankaj Sharma • Nov 9 '20

Hello Emma! 😀 Thank you for this tutorial. I have also implemented a search 🧐 in react. But I am using a different approach. 🤯 I think my code is a bit shorter. Please share your thoughts. As I am new in react and still I am learning 😅😅.

dark-todo.netlify.app/
My Code: github.com/Starboy-Sharma/react-to...

Taufik Nurhidayat • Nov 5 '20

I want to try, but i use vue :D

Emma Goto 🍙 • Nov 5 '20

I'm sure some of this is probably quite similar to Vue - especially the accessibility bits!

Vaibhav Khulbe • Nov 6 '20

That's a great breakdown! Will feature this article in my newsletter. 😍

Emma Goto 🍙 • Nov 6 '20

Wow that's awesome! I'll make sure to subscribe :)

Vaibhav Khulbe • Nov 6 '20

Thank you so much!

Alex Vechy • Nov 11 '20

Thank you, Emma! Very good read!

Keith Charles • Nov 6 '20 • Edited

This is so great. One of the first mini how-to's that goes this far in-depth on the accessibility aspect of components. I love it, thanks so much for sharing!

Emma Goto 🍙 • Nov 6 '20

Thanks Keith! I had to do a lot of Googling to try and find out the answers to my accessibility questions - definitely an area of improvement for all of us as developers!