Introduction

In the previous chapters, we have seen how React handles state in class components. By the end of 2018, however, React developers had come up with a completely new API called Hooks, which changes how we manipulate the state of a component. This brings in massive syntax changes within the React framework. Even more importantly, this new method of state management can be used to manipulate state of the functional components.

Nothing in the life of a React component has a more significant effect than Hooks, which, of course, begs the question: what problems do Hooks solve that the former APIs could not? Previously, if we wanted to declare a state, we had to create a whole class and all the boilerplate code for that. Hooks, on the other hand, enable you to declare the state of a component with just one line. Hooks make React code more readable, maintainable, and reusable, while also making it a lot easier for newcomers to understand.

The Hooks library has been...