Rendering List with Fetch in React

Question

Trying to render a list of movies from a random API and eventually filter them.

componentDidMount() {
    var myRequest = new Request(website);
    let movies = [];

    fetch(myRequest)
        .then(function(response) { return response.json(); })
        .then(function(data) {
            data.forEach(movie =>{
                movies.push(movie.title);
            })
        });
     this.setState({movies: movies});
}

render() {
    console.log(this.state.movies);
    console.log(this.state.movies.length);
    return (
        <h1>Movie List</h1>
    )
}

If I render this I can only print my state and not access what is inside. How would I create a list of LIs and render a UL? Thanks

Answer 1

A few things. fetch is asynchronous, so you're essentially just going to be setting movies to an empty array as this is written. If data is an array of movies, you can just set that directly in your state rather than copying it to a new array first. Finally, using an arrow function for the final callback in the promise will allow you to use this.setState without having to explicitly bind the function.

Finally, you can use JSX curly brace syntax to map over the movies in your state object, and render them as items in a list.

class MyComponent extends React.Component {
  constructor() {
    super()
    this.state = { movies: [] }
  }

  componentDidMount() {
    var myRequest = new Request(website);
    let movies = [];

    fetch(myRequest)
      .then(response => response.json())
      .then(data => {
        this.setState({ movies: data })
      })
  }

  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        <h1>Movie List</h1>
        <ul>
          {this.state.movies.map(movie => {
            return <li key={`movie-${movie.id}`}>{movie.name}</li>
          })}
        </ul>
      </div>
    )
  }
}