React - clearing an input value after form submit

Question

Hi there Stackoverflowers,

I'm presented with a rather silly problem. I am in the process of creating my first React application and I have encoutered a little issue, where I am not able to clear my input value, after I submit a form. A tried googling this problem, found some similar threads here, but I was not able to resolve this. I do NOT want to change the state of my component/application, just to change the value of the input to an empty string. I tried clearing the value of the input in my onHandleSubmit function, but I got an error "Cannot set property 'value' of undefined".

I would appreaciate any help. Thanks in advance! :)

My code:

My SearchBar Component:

import React, { Component } from "react";

class SearchBar extends Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);

    this.state = {
      city: ""
    };

    this.onHandleChange = this.onHandleChange.bind(this);
    this.onHandleSubmit = this.onHandleSubmit.bind(this);
  }

  render() {
    return (
      <form>
        <input
          id="mainInput"
          onChange={this.onHandleChange}
          placeholder="Get current weather..."
          value={this.state.city}
          type="text"
        />
        <button onClick={this.onHandleSubmit} type="submit">
          Search!
        </button>
      </form>
    );
  }

  onHandleChange(e) {
    this.setState({
      city: e.target.value
    });
  }

  onHandleSubmit(e) {
    e.preventDefault();
    const city = this.state.city;
    this.props.onSearchTermChange(city);
    this.mainInput.value = "";
  }
}

export default SearchBar;

Answer 1

You are having a controlled component where input value is determined by this.state.city. So once you submit you have to clear your state which will clear your input automatically.

onHandleSubmit(e) {
    e.preventDefault();
    const city = this.state.city;
    this.props.onSearchTermChange(city);
    this.setState({
     city: ''
   });
}

Answer 2

In your onHandleSubmit function, set your state to {city: ''} again like this :

this.setState({ city: '' });

Answer 3

Since you input field is a controlled element, you cannot directly change the input field value without modifying the state.

Also in

onHandleSubmit(e) {
    e.preventDefault();
    const city = this.state.city;
    this.props.onSearchTermChange(city);
    this.mainInput.value = "";
  }

this.mainInput doesn't refer the input since mainInput is an id, you need to specify a ref to the input

<input
      ref={(ref) => this.mainInput= ref}
      onChange={this.onHandleChange}
      placeholder="Get current weather..."
      value={this.state.city}
      type="text"
    />

In you current state the best way is to clear the state to clear the input value

onHandleSubmit(e) {
    e.preventDefault();
    const city = this.state.city;
    this.props.onSearchTermChange(city);
    this.setState({city: ""});
  }

However if you still for some reason want to keep the value in state even if the form is submitted, you would rather make the input uncontrolled

<input
      id="mainInput"
      onChange={this.onHandleChange}
      placeholder="Get current weather..."
      type="text"
    />

and update the value in state onChange and onSubmit clear the input using ref

 onHandleChange(e) {
    this.setState({
      city: e.target.value
    });
  }

  onHandleSubmit(e) {
    e.preventDefault();
    const city = this.state.city;
    this.props.onSearchTermChange(city);
    this.mainInput.value = "";
  }

Having Said that, I don't see any point in keeping the state unchanged, so the first option should be the way to go.

Answer 4

this.mainInput doesn't actually point to anything. Since you are using a controlled component (i.e. the value of the input is obtained from state) you can set this.state.city to null:

onHandleSubmit(e) {
  e.preventDefault();
  const city = this.state.city;
  this.props.onSearchTermChange(city);
  this.setState({ city: '' });
}