javascript - this.state inside setState ReactJS

Question

So I have some confusion regarding the async nature of setState in ReactJS. As per React docs, you shouldn't use this.state inside setState(). But if I have a counter as a state and i want to update it on click like this:

class App extends React.Component {
    state = { counter: 0 }

    onClick = () => {
        this.setState({counter: this.state.counter + 1})
    }

    render() {
        return (
          <div>
            <div>{this.state.counter}</div>
            <p onClick={this.onClick}>Click me</p>
          </div>
        )
    }
}

This works as expected. So why is this code wrong?

UPDATE: I know that setState is async, and it accepts a callback which has previous state as an argument, but I am not sure why I should use it here? I want to refer to the old state inside setState, so why should I use the callback function in this case? Whenever this.setState() is executed, this.state inside it will always refer to the old state, and its value will be changed to the new state only after setState has finished executing, not while it is executing.

Answer 1

You have access to prevState from within your setState call:

this.setState((prevState) => ({
    counter: prevState.counter +1
}))

That will allow you to safely increment the current state value.

The React documentation summarises why you cannot rely on this.state to be accurate during update: https://reactjs.org/docs/state-and-lifecycle.html#state-updates-may-be-asynchronous