Week 14 – Custom Hooks, Finishing usePopcorn, and Learning How to Design Code

Source: Dev.to

Milestone: usePopcorn Completed

The usePopcorn app is finally complete after three weeks of development. This week focused on:

• Final polish
• Cleanup
• Refactoring
• Structuring the code better with custom hooks

Live Demo: Live App
GitHub: Readme File Link

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Custom Hooks

Custom hooks are not just a new feature; they represent a new way of thinking about React code architecture. They help:

• Separate logic from UI
• Clean up components
• Make code reusable
• Design your own abstractions

Example: useGeolocation

The week’s challenge was to build a custom hook for geolocation that handles:

• Loading state
• Errors
• Position data
• Click count
• The underlying browser API call

The consuming component only needs to request:

const { position, loading, error, requestLocation } = useGeolocation();

This exercise emphasized what a hook should expose versus what it should hide.

Refactoring with Custom Hooks in usePopcorn

In the finished app, several domain‑specific hooks now encapsulate common logic:

• useMovies – fetches and manages movie data
• useLocalStorage – synchronizes state with localStorage
• useKey – handles keyboard shortcuts

By moving useEffect, fetch logic, AbortController, event listeners, and localStorage handling into these hooks, components are now primarily responsible for rendering UI.

Reflections

• This week wasn’t about learning many new concepts; it was about organizing existing knowledge.
• Clean React code isn’t about writing more code; it’s about designing better boundaries.
• Not every week brings big new APIs or features—some weeks focus on refinement, structure, and maturity.

Week 14 taught me that thoughtful architecture and reusable abstractions are as valuable as any new library. The usePopcorn project is now a finished piece of engineering, and I’m continuing to learn, improve, and move forward. 💪