React Hook recipe from https://usehooks.com. Demo: https://codesandbox.io/s/23jk7wlw4y

use-onclick-outside-example.jsx

import { useState, useEffect, useRef } from 'react';

// Usage
function App() {
  // Create a ref that we add to the element for which we want to detect outside clicks
  const ref = useRef();
  // State for our modal
  const [isModalOpen, setModalOpen] = useState(false);
  // Call hook passing in the ref and a function to call on outside click
  useOnClickOutside(ref, () => setModalOpen(false));

  return (
    <div>
      {isModalOpen ? (
        <div ref={ref}>
          👋 Hey, I'm a modal. Click anywhere outside of me to close.
        </div>
      ) : (
        <button onClick={() => setModalOpen(true)}>Open Modal</button>
      )}
    </div>
  );
}

// Hook
function useOnClickOutside(ref, handler) {
  useEffect(
    () => {
      const listener = event => {
        // Do nothing if clicking ref's element or descendent elements
        if (!ref.current || ref.current.contains(event.target)) {
          return;
        }

        handler(event);
      };

      document.addEventListener('mousedown', listener);
      document.addEventListener('touchstart', listener);

      return () => {
        document.removeEventListener('mousedown', listener);
        document.removeEventListener('touchstart', listener);
      };
    },
    // Add ref and handler to effect dependencies
    // It's worth noting that because passed in handler is a new ...
    // ... function on every render that will cause this effect ...
    // ... callback/cleanup to run every render. It's not a big deal ...
    // ... but to optimize you can wrap handler in useCallback before ...
    // ... passing it into this hook.
    [ref, handler]
  );
}

@ianobermiller that's the risk, but IMHO it's better choice to use "first handler" only rather than dispose previous effect and setup it again on each render as people most commonly will be using inline handlers with this and won't memoize them.

the implementation doesn't account for passive events, you could also link somewhere to existing libraries doing the same thing (I actually have created this one some days ago https://github.com/Andarist/use-onclickoutside

@ianobermiller @Andarist: Good feedback! Any reason why I can't just memoize the handler within useOnClickOutside so that it doesn't matter whether they memoize?

@Andarist: I updated the post to link to your library with a mention that your's accounts for passive events (posts now have an "also check out" section at the bottom): https://usehooks.com/#useOnClickOutside

Why not return the ref from useOnClickOutside?

@j-f1 The problem with that is if you need to have multiple hooks access the same ref. You'd want to be able to pass the ref in as an argument.

I had to remove the [] observer to make sure the handler can use local state from component when called.

useEffect should have ref and handler as dependencies. @MatxBerg wouldn't have had an issue.

EDIT: Actually that would be the same as removing the dependencies. Maybe leave ref inside and add an optional dependencies argument for handler dependencies?

EDIT: Or we actually do put handler inside the dependencies, and leave a note to the user of the hook the they should use useCallback.

@MatxBerg @DimitarNestorov I like the idea of making an optional dependencies argument, and if none is provided, stick with the empty array. I ran into a similar situation using this hook today, where I needed to access some local state inside the handler, and based upon it, decide whether I wanted to do anything further or not, and because of the empty deps array, I was getting the original bound values. So allowing the passing in of an optional deps array would alleviate that.

@ianobermiller @DimitarNestorov @epzilla @MatxBerg Thanks, I've added ref and handler to the effect deps. I think that makes sense. Running callback/cleanup on every render is not a big deal and like you say, user can always wrap handler in useCallback to optimize.

Why not click event?

I am using the hook on a menu button. The button toggles a dropdown and when the dropdown is visible, I use this hook as a acessibility so the user can click outside the dropdown it toggles off too. the problem is that the button itself makes the dropdown toggles twice: off and on.

@notnishi if you'd like to make the button do nothing when the menu is open you could try:

const buttonRef = useRef();
const menuRef = useRef();
useOnClickOutside(menuRef, event => {
  if (!buttonRef.current.contains(event.target)) {
    setMenuOpen(false);
  }
});

Another option would be to add menuRef to an element that wraps both the button and menu. That way clicking the button doesn't trigger the hook handler function and you can just have the button onClick event close the menu itself.

Finally, if that's not an option, you could try react-cool-onclickoutside, which supports adding a special className to elements to prevent them from triggering the hook handler.

I am getting: Uncaught TypeError: ref.current.contains is not a function