Trying to fetch the list of products from json and then render it on the page in a React component. But don't understand what's wrong with my code

Question

import { useState, useEffect } from "react";

function GoodsList(props) {
    const [products, setProducts] = useState(null);
    const goods = props.goods;
    let productCards = [];

    fetch('products.json').then(async response => {
        setProducts(await response.json());
    })

    let content;
    useEffect(() => {
        if (products != null) {
            for (let x = 0; x < products[goods].length; x++) {
                productCards.push(
                    <div className="productCard" key={x}>
                        <div className="productPicture">
                            <img src={products[goods[x].pic]} /></div>
                        <div className="productName">{products[goods[x].name]}</div>
                    </div>
                )
            }
            content = (
                <div className="list">
                    {productCards}
                </div>
            );
            console.log(productCards);
        }
    }
    )
    return content;
}

Initially I put the return of the JSX inside the useEffect function, but it was causing an error. Now it just doesn't return anything without any errors in the console, but the console.log inside useeffect outputs indefinitely somehow.

Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking. — Community
– Community Bot, Commented Apr 22, 2023 at 14:12

David · Accepted Answer · 2023-04-22 11:17:28Z

There's a lot wrong here, to be honest. To name a few...

You're fetching the data on every render, regardless of whether you need to or not.
You're updating state on every render, which triggers a re-render on every render, indefinitely.
There's no dependency array in the useEffect call, so that also triggers on every render.
The component only ever returns undefined (the default initial value of content) so no actual rendered output will ever be seen.

Overall, the key changes to make are:

All of your rendering logic is in useEffect, but should be in the main body of the component to produce a rendered result.
The operation to fetch the data is in the main body of the component, but should be in useEffect so it only happens when it needs to.

So first let's wrap this in a useEffect:

useEffect(() => {
  fetch('products.json').then(async response => {
    setProducts(await response.json());
  });
}, [setProducts]);

So now this operation to fetch the data will only happen once, when the component first loads. (And technically would happen again any time setProducts ever changes, but setProducts won't change since it also comes from a React-managed hook.)

Then after that, you seem to be drastically over-thinking how to build your rendered output. Simplify. Just return the JSX markup you want based on the state of products. For example:

return (
  <div className="list">
    {products && products[goods].map((good, i) => (
      <div className="productCard" key={i}>
        <div className="productPicture">
          <img src={good.pic]} /></div>
        <div className="productName">{good.name]}</div>
      </div>
    )}
  </div>
);

I would probably initialise products to an empty array rather than null too.
Thank you very much! I'm just learning React and you helped a lot

Sandesh Landge · Accepted Answer · 2025-08-22 08:26:34Z

        /* Add some basic styling to make
// Get products from API
fetch('/products')
  .then(response => response.json())
  .then(products => {
    // Render product listings
    const productListings = products.map(product => {
      return `
        <div>
          <h2>${product.name}</h2>
          <p>${product.price}</p>
          <button>Add to Cart</button>
        </div>
      `;
    });

    document.getElementById('product-list

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Trying to fetch the list of products from json and then render it on the page in a React component. But don't understand what's wrong with my code

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

Comments

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

Comments

Related