How to detect click outside in a React component

If you are looking for closing a modal when clicked outside, you can refer this article.

You might have come across instances where you would want to do certain actions when the user clicks outside a component, say like closing a modal or a dropdown menu. In this tutorial, we will display a dropdown and close the dropdown when the user clicks outside it.

Setting up the Project

Create a react project using the following command:

1npx create-react-app react-on-click-outside

Adding styles

Update the index.css with the following styles. Here we are adding some basic styling for our button and the dropdown list.

index.css

1body {
2  margin: 0 auto;
3  max-width: 500px;
4}
5.wrapper {
6  display: inline-flex;
7  flex-direction: column;
8}
9
10.button {
11  margin: 20px 0px 0px 0px;
12  border: 1px solid #2185d0;
13  padding: 10px;
14  border-radius: 5px;
15  cursor: pointer;
16  font-weight: bold;
17  background-color: white;
18  width: 140px;
19}
20
21.list {
22  box-shadow: 0 6px 12px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.175);
23  border: 1px solid #ccc;
24  list-style-type: none;
25  padding: 0;
26  margin: 0;
27  width: auto;
28  display: inline-block;
29}
30.list-item {
31  padding: 8px;
32  cursor: pointer;
33  background-color: white;
34}
35.list-item:hover,
36.list-item:active {
37  background-color: #f3f3f3;
38}

In the App.js, let's create a button and a dropdown list, which will be displayed when the button is clicked.

App.js

1import { useState } from "react"
2
3function App() {
4  const [isMenuOpen, setIsMenuOpen] = useState(false)
5
6  return (
7    <div className="wrapper">
8      <button
9        className="button"
10        onClick={() => setIsMenuOpen(oldState => !oldState)}
11      >
12        Click Me
13      </button>
14      {isMenuOpen && (
15        <ul className="list">
16          <li className="list-item">dropdown option 1</li>
17          <li className="list-item">dropdown option 2</li>
18          <li className="list-item">dropdown option 3</li>
19          <li className="list-item">dropdown option 4</li>
20        </ul>
21      )}
22    </div>
23  )
24}
25
26export default App

Now if you run the app and click on the button, you will be able to see the dropdown as shown below:

Using the contains API, we can identify whether a target node (the component on which the user has clicked) is inside a particular node or not. That is, if the clicked component is within (or itself) the component we are interested in, then it will return true otherwise false.

In our case the interested component is the list and the dropdown. So we will add a ref to that component which wraps both of them.

App.js

1import { useEffect, useRef, useState } from "react"
2
3function App() {
4  const ref = useRef()
5
6  const [isMenuOpen, setIsMenuOpen] = useState(false)
7
8  useEffect(() => {
9    const checkIfClickedOutside = e => {
10      // If the menu is open and the clicked target is not within the menu,
11      // then close the menu
12      if (isMenuOpen && ref.current && !ref.current.contains(e.target)) {
13        setIsMenuOpen(false)
14      }
15    }
16
17    document.addEventListener("mousedown", checkIfClickedOutside)
18
19    return () => {
20      // Cleanup the event listener
21      document.removeEventListener("mousedown", checkIfClickedOutside)
22    }
23  }, [isMenuOpen])
24
25  return (
26    <div className="wrapper" ref={ref}>
27      <button
28        className="button"
29        onClick={() => setIsMenuOpen(oldState => !oldState)}
30      >
31        Click Me
32      </button>
33      {isMenuOpen && (
34        <ul className="list">
35          <li className="list-item">dropdown option 1</li>
36          <li className="list-item">dropdown option 2</li>
37          <li className="list-item">dropdown option 3</li>
38          <li className="list-item">dropdown option 4</li>
39        </ul>
40      )}
41    </div>
42  )
43}
44
45export default App

Also, we are running an effect whenever the state of the menu changes and we are binding a mousedown event to the document so that whenever the user clicks on the document, we can check if it is inside or outside the wrapper and hide the list accordingly.

Now if you run the app and click on the button and click outside the list, the list will be closed.

Demo and source code

You can view a demo here and the complete source code here.

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How to detect click outside in a React component

Table of Contents

Setting up the Project

Adding styles

Demo and source code

Related Articles

Comments

Tools

How to detect click outside in a React component

Table of Contents

Setting up the Project

Adding styles

Creating the dropdown list

Closing the dropdown when clicked outside

Demo and source code

Related Articles

Comments

Tools