Call event handler when a click outside the component takes place

by React

react-outerclick

HOC wrapper with frugal document event strategy.

NB: this will work with React Classes, not with stateless components

Get a callback when a click happens outside of your component. If your React class implements handleOuterClick, it will get called when a click outside of the root node for your element takes place.

Installation

npm i react-outerclick

Usage

As a HOC, you can use the experimental decorator style:

import React from 'react';
import outerClick from 'react-outerclick';

@outerClick
class Foo extends React.Component {

  state = {
    opened: true
  };

  handleOuterClick(event){
    this.setState({
        opened: false
    });
  }

  render(){
    return <div>Foo. Click elsewhere</div>;
  }
}

export default Foo;

Alternatively, without stage-0 and babel-plugin-transform-decorators-legacy, this looks like so:

import React from 'react';
import outerClick from 'react-outerclick';

class Foo extends React.Component {

  constructor(props){
    super(props);
    this.state = {
        opened: true
    };
  }

  handleOuterClick(event){
    this.setState({
        opened: false
    });
  }

  render(){
    return <div>Foo. Click elsewhere</div>;
  }
}

// decorate here:
export default outerClick(Foo);

Why?

Because:

  • need to be able to do this with a low footprint - so a single document event handler for all elements that need it.
  • gets element.ownerDocument correctly so can work in popups/tearoffs, unlike other implementations

Limitations

Hot Module Reloading (react-hmre, react-hot-loader etc) any component that has an outerClick handler will cause the outer click functionality to fail as it's not going to find the old component instance and there is no lifecycle method that is available to refresh the event subscriptions.

GitHub