A lazy React.js input field that only updates when it is told to re-render (fixes issues with Flux backed field data)

Using input elements with Flux can be a pain because actions are asynchronous. Triggering an action in the onChange handler will cause React's default input component to re-render the original value miliseconds before the new value arrives from the store.

LazyInput solves this problem by keeping an internal state for value and only updates that state when given new props, and then only after a lazyLevel has lapsed (default 1s). Otherwise, it works exactly like input. Well, almost. . .

LazyInput expands the type prop slightly to accept textarea in addition to the normal input types. We chose to do it this way because it seemed better than maintaining two packages (LazyInput and LazyTextarea), having lazy-input/input and lazy-input/textarea require statements, or having LazyInput.input and LazyInput.textarea.

var LazyInput = require('lazy-input');
// ...
render: function() {
  return (
    <div>
      // an input element
      <LazyInput type="text" value="some value" onChange={this.onChange} />

      // a test area element
      <LazyInput type="textarea" value="some value" onChange={this.onTextAreaChange} />
    </div>
  );
}

LazyInput can also accept any React Component as the type. For example, if you are using the react-input-placeholder to get placeholder working in older browsers (ex. IE9), then you can pass through the input component directly. There is plenty of rope here to hang yourself though, so be careful.

var Input= PlaceholderShim.input;
// ...
<LazyInput type={Input} value="some value" onChange={this.onChange} />

Installing via npmjs

npm install --save lazy-input

Using

LazyInput = require('lazy-input');
// ...
<LazyInput type="text" value={this.state.myFluxValue} onChange={this.onChange} />

v1.1 - LazyInput types can now include any React Component class. Thanks go to Riku Rouvila.

• v1.1.1 - fixed bug where html5 descriptive input types crashed (ex. type="tel"). Thanks go to Eric Fennell for reporting the bug.