Hooks

    Hooks are specially-implemented functions that let us add functionality to React components beyond just creating and returning React elements.

    We'll look at the following built-in hooks in more detail:

    • useState - Persist state within a component function
    • useReducer - Similar to useState, but for state that involves multiple sub-values
    • useEffect - Perform side effects within our component functions
    • useRef - Wrap a mutable value

    We can also compose built-in hooks to build our own.

    Rules and Linting

    Hooks aren't regular functions; they have to be written in a certain way. To dive deeper into this topic, check out Rules of Hooks.

    When using hooks, we typically want to use eslint and the react-hooks plugin. Hooks are powerful, but can be unintuitive at first, and this tool catches a lot of mistakes before we ever run our code. The Rules of Hooks link has more detail on how to install this.

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