React: How to Make Text Editable on Double Click

In this blog post, we will explore how to implement the functionality of making a specific part of a page editable when double-clicked using React.

To achieve this, we can utilize the toggle state variable to toggle between showing the editable element and the non-editable element. When the element is double-clicked, we change the value of the toggle state to display the appropriate element.

Here is an example of how this can be implemented:

const [toggle, setToggle] = useState(true);
const [name, setName] = useState('test');

// ...

toggle ? (
  <p
    onDoubleClick={() => {
      setToggle(false);
    }}
  >
    {name}
  </p>
) : (
  <input
    type='text'
    value={project.status}
  />
)

In this code snippet, we conditionally render either a <p> element or an <input> element based on the value of the toggle state. When the element is double-clicked, the toggle state is set to false, triggering the rendering of the <input> element.

To make the <input> element editable, we can add certain props to it. First, we assign the state variable name to the value prop of the <input> element. This ensures that the initial value is displayed.

We can also implement the onChange() event listener to update the name state whenever there is any change to the content of the <input> field.

To handle the “Enter” or “Escape” key press events, we can utilize the onKeyDown() event listener. If the pressed key is “Enter” or “Escape”, we set the toggle state back to true, causing the non-editable <p> element to be rendered again. Additionally, we prevent the default behavior of the key press event and stop its propagation.

Here is an example of how to implement these features:

<input
  type="text"
  value={name}
  onChange={(event) => {
    setName(name)
  }}
  onKeyDown={(event) => {
    if (event.key === 'Enter' || event.key === 'Escape') {
      setToggle(true);
      event.preventDefault();
      event.stopPropagation();
    }
  }}
/>

Feel free to add any necessary side effects to the onKeyDown() event listener if you need to save the edited value somewhere.

Tags: React, double-click event, editable text, state variable.