React Hook Warnings for async function in useEffect: useEffect function must return a cleanup function or nothing

I suggest to look at Dan Abramov (one of the React core maintainers) answer here:

I think you're making it more complicated than it needs to be.

function Example() {
  const [data, dataSet] = useState<any>(null)

  useEffect(() => {
    async function fetchMyAPI() {
      let response = await fetch('api/data')
      response = await response.json()
      dataSet(response)
    }

    fetchMyAPI()
  }, [])

  return <div>{JSON.stringify(data)}</div>
}

Longer term we'll discourage this pattern because it encourages race conditions. Such as — anything could happen between your call starts and ends, and you could have gotten new props. Instead, we'll recommend Suspense for data fetching which will look more like

const response = MyAPIResource.read();

and no effects. But in the meantime you can move the async stuff to a separate function and call it.

You can read more about experimental suspense here.

If you want to use functions outside with eslint.

 function OutsideUsageExample({ userId }) {
  const [data, dataSet] = useState<any>(null)

  const fetchMyAPI = useCallback(async () => {
    let response = await fetch('api/data/' + userId)
    response = await response.json()
    dataSet(response)
  }, [userId]) // if userId changes, useEffect will run again
               // if you want to run only once, just leave array empty []

  useEffect(() => {
    fetchMyAPI()
  }, [fetchMyAPI])

  return (
    <div>
      <div>data: {JSON.stringify(data)}</div>
      <div>
        <button onClick={fetchMyAPI}>manual fetch</button>
      </div>
    </div>
  )
}

If you will use useCallback, look at example of how it works useCallback. Sandbox.

import React, { useState, useEffect, useCallback } from "react";

export default function App() {
  const [counter, setCounter] = useState(1);

  // if counter is changed, than fn will be updated with new counter value
  const fn = useCallback(() => {
    setCounter(counter + 1);
  }, [counter]);

  // if counter is changed, than fn will not be updated and counter will be always 1 inside fn
  /*const fnBad = useCallback(() => {
      setCounter(counter + 1);
    }, []);*/

  // if fn or counter is changed, than useEffect will rerun
  useEffect(() => {
    if (!(counter % 2)) return; // this will stop the loop if counter is not even

    fn();
  }, [fn, counter]);

  // this will be infinite loop because fn is always changing with new counter value
  /*useEffect(() => {
    fn();
  }, [fn]);*/

  return (
    <div>
      <div>Counter is {counter}</div>
      <button onClick={fn}>add +1 count</button>
    </div>
  );
}

When you use an async function like

async () => {
    try {
        const response = await fetch(`https://www.reddit.com/r/${subreddit}.json`);
        const json = await response.json();
        setPosts(json.data.children.map(it => it.data));
    } catch (e) {
        console.error(e);
    }
}

it returns a promise and useEffect doesn't expect the callback function to return Promise, rather it expects that nothing is returned or a function is returned.

As a workaround for the warning you can use a self invoking async function.

useEffect(() => {
    (async function() {
        try {
            const response = await fetch(
                `https://www.reddit.com/r/${subreddit}.json`
            );
            const json = await response.json();
            setPosts(json.data.children.map(it => it.data));
        } catch (e) {
            console.error(e);
        }
    })();
}, []);

or to make it more cleaner you could define a function and then call it

useEffect(() => {
    async function fetchData() {
        try {
            const response = await fetch(
                `https://www.reddit.com/r/${subreddit}.json`
            );
            const json = await response.json();
            setPosts(json.data.children.map(it => it.data));
        } catch (e) {
            console.error(e);
        }
    };
    fetchData();
}, []);

the second solution will make it easier to read and will help you write code to cancel previous requests if a new one is fired or save the latest request response in state

Working codesandbox

Until React provides a better way, you can create a helper, useEffectAsync.js:

import { useEffect } from 'react';


export default function useEffectAsync(effect, inputs) {
    useEffect(() => {
        effect();
    }, inputs);
}

Now you can pass an async function:

useEffectAsync(async () => {
    const items = await fetchSomeItems();
    console.log(items);
}, []);

Update

If you choose this approach, note that it's bad form. I resort to this when I know it's safe, but it's always bad form and haphazard.

Suspense for Data Fetching, which is still experimental, will solve some of the cases.

In other cases, you can model the async results as events so that you can add or remove a listener based on the component life cycle.

Or you can model the async results as an Observable so that you can subscribe and unsubscribe based on the component life cycle.

You can also use IIFE format as well to keep things short

function Example() {
    const [data, dataSet] = useState<any>(null)

    useEffect(() => {
        (async () => {
            let response = await fetch('api/data')
            response = await response.json()
            dataSet(response);
        })();
    }, [])

    return <div>{JSON.stringify(data)}</div>
}