Solving react-hook-form Overwrites Issue with Custom Select Component

Learn how to fix the issue of `react-hook-form` overwriting the onChange function in a custom Select component, ensuring accurate form value updates and validations.
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Troubleshooting react-hook-form with Custom Select Components

When using forms in React applications, particularly with react-hook-form, developers often encounter issues related to state management and event handling in customized components. One common problem arises when a custom Select component is combined with react-hook-form and has its onChange event handler overwritten, causing unexpected behavior. In this guide, we'll explore a solution to this issue, enabling your custom Select component to work seamlessly with react-hook-form without any complications.

The Problem Understanding

The Custom Select Component

The developer created a customized Select component, making use of React's useState and onChange functionalities. When integrating this component with react-hook-form, several issues surfaced, including:

Overwritten onChange: The onChange property passed to the input element gets overwritten by react-hook-form, preventing the component from capturing input changes correctly.

Delayed Value Updates: Even after selecting an option from the dropdown, the form logs the previous state instead of the updated state during submission.

Validation Issues: The validation does not trigger as expected, especially for specific cases like entering restricted values (like "peach").

All these make for a frustrating development experience, but they are solvable with some changes to the code.

Solutions

Issue 1: Prevent Overwriting of onChange

To ensure that your custom onChange function does not get overridden by react-hook-form, you can destructure the props. Here's how:

Destructure props: Extract onChange from your props and store the rest in restProps.

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Update Input: Use restProps for the input component.

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Issue 2 & 3: Updating Values on Change

Next, you need to ensure that the onChange you've defined within the Select component correctly updates both the local state and notifies react-hook-form. Here’s how to implement those changes:

Update the onClickFruit Function:
Modify this function to also call onChange with the selected fruit value:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Handle Input Changes Correctly:
Update your onChange handler for the input as well, by calling onChange with the new value every time it changes:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Here's the final implementation for the input in your Select component:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Proper Validation Triggering

With these adjustments, you ensure that validation works as intended. Kirking its way through various edge cases, it will now effectively trigger when restricted entries (like "peach") are made.

Conclusion

Integrating custom components smoothly with react-hook-form can be tricky, especially when dealing with event handlers. By properly managing the onChange functionality and ensuring that state updates are communicated back to react-hook-form, developers can eliminate common pitfalls. This not only enhances the user experience but also streamlines the development process.

If you encounter related issues or have more questions about working with react-hook-form, feel free to share your experiences in the comments below!