If you want to handle pathological use cases inside React using JavaScript’s setInterval function, use this library called @use-it/interval developed by Donavon.

npm i @use-it/interval

Suppose you want to run a function periodically with a specified interval, but you need to control its behavior dynamically. Here’s how you can do it:

import useInterval from "@use-it/interval";
import { useState } from "react";

function Component() {
    const [play, setPlay] = useState(false);

    useInterval(() => {
        // do something periodically
    }, play ? 1000 * INTERVAL : null);

    // rest of your code ...
}

Here’s the codesandbox demo for this.

Similarly, if you want to attach or detach event-handling logic to an element or global scope (like window or document) inside a React Hook, you can use @use-it/event-listener.

How convenient!

Reading list

• Dan Abramov’s article about setInterval
• Pathological (Mathematics)
• Twitter thread by Donavon