How-To Write a Simple Countdown with React

There are tutorials for writing countdown from scratch. With momentjs, it should be a pretty simple task.

But as the name suggests, easytimer makes it easy.

First, set up the countdown variable with React useState:

  const [countdown, setCountdown] = useState(null);

Then, start the timer, and use event listeners to listen to the timer changes, update the countdown variable.

      const target = {
        minutes: 1
      };
      const timer = new Timer();
      timer.start({ countdown: true, startValues: target });
      timer.addEventListener("secondsUpdated", () =>
        setCountdown(timer.getTimeValues().toString())
      );

The target object accepts these keys: secondTenths, seconds, minutes, hours, days, or you can pass in an array in the exact order of [secondTenths, seconds, minutes, hours, days]

Lastly, remember to remove the listeners when component unmount.

      // Remove listeners on unmount
      return () => {
        timer.removeEventListener("secondsUpdated");
        timer.removeEventListener("targetAchieved");
      };

Here's the complete source code, or you can view it on codesandbox

import React, { useState, useEffect } from "react";
import Timer from "easytimer";
import "./styles.css";

const App = () => {
  const EXPIRED = "Expired";
  const [countdown, setCountdown] = useState(null);
  const isActive = countdown !== EXPIRED && countdown !== null;

  useEffect(
    () => {
      const target = {
        minutes: 1
      };

      const timer = new Timer();
      timer.start({ countdown: true, startValues: target });
      timer.addEventListener("secondsUpdated", () =>
        setCountdown(timer.getTimeValues().toString())
      );
      timer.addEventListener("targetAchieved", () => setCountdown(EXPIRED));
      // Remove listners on unmount
      return () => {
        timer.removeEventListener("secondsUpdated");
        timer.removeEventListener("targetAchieved");
      };
    },
    // Known issue with eslint warning against the run-once useEffect
    // eslint-disable-next-line
    []
  );

  return (
    <div className="App">
      <h1>Countdown Demo</h1>
      <h2>{isActive ? countdown : EXPIRED}</h2>
      <div>(refresh to reset a 1 min countdown)</div>
    </div>
  );
};

export default App;

I found it a little bit confusing that there are two npm packages named easytimer: easytimer (last updated 4 years ago) and easytimer.js (last updated 4 months ago), but they both point to the same GitHub user.

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How-To Write a Simple Countdown with React

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