Understanding the useEffect Hook
React is primarily used for building user interfaces, where components re-render based on changes in state or props. But real-world applications often need to interact with external systems—fetching data, subscribing to events, updating the DOM, or starting timers. These are known as side effects, and React’s useEffect hook is the tool designed to handle them in functional components. What is useEffect? The useEffect hook lets you perform side effects in your component. It's React’s way of combining several lifecycle methods from class components (like componentDidMount, componentDidUpdate, and componentWillUnmount) into a single, unified API. Syntax : useEffect(() => { // side effect code return () => { // cleanup code (optional) }; }, [dependencies]); The first argument is a function containing your side effect logic. The optional second argument is a dependency array that controls when the effect runs. jsx Basic Example import React, { u...