Detect click outside React component

Question

I\'m looking for a way to detect if a click event happened outside of a component, as described in this article. jQuery closest() is used to see if the target from a click e

Answer 1

[Update] Solution with React ^16.8 using Hooks

CodeSandbox

import React, { useEffect, useRef, useState } from 'react';

const SampleComponent = () => {
    const [clickedOutside, setClickedOutside] = useState(false);
    const myRef = useRef();

    const handleClickOutside = e => {
        if (!myRef.current.contains(e.target)) {
            setClickedOutside(true);
        }
    };

    const handleClickInside = () => setClickedOutside(false);

    useEffect(() => {
        document.addEventListener('mousedown', handleClickOutside);
        return () => document.removeEventListener('mousedown', handleClickOutside);
    });

    return (
        
            {clickedOutside ? 'Bye!' : 'Hello!'}
        
    );
};

export default SampleComponent;

---

Solution with React ^16.3:

CodeSandbox

import React, { Component } from "react";

class SampleComponent extends Component {
  state = {
    clickedOutside: false
  };

  componentDidMount() {
    document.addEventListener("mousedown", this.handleClickOutside);
  }

  componentWillUnmount() {
    document.removeEventListener("mousedown", this.handleClickOutside);
  }

  myRef = React.createRef();

  handleClickOutside = e => {
    if (!this.myRef.current.contains(e.target)) {
      this.setState({ clickedOutside: true });
    }
  };

  handleClickInside = () => this.setState({ clickedOutside: false });

  render() {
    return (
      
        {this.state.clickedOutside ? "Bye!" : "Hello!"}
      
    );
  }
}

export default SampleComponent;