Inconsistent behaviour on remove last item (vs remove all items)

[joe-oli]

Are you asking a question?

No.

Are you reporting a bug or runtime error?

An error in your example, a runtime error, and a bug.

An error in your example in this page:
https://react-select.com/creatable

Specifically Multi-select text input and the method handleKeyDown;

  handleKeyDown = (event: SyntheticKeyboardEvent<HTMLElement>) => {
    const { inputValue, value } = this.state;
    if (!inputValue) return;
    switch (event.key) {
      case 'Enter':
      case 'Tab':
		//... etc... 
        this.setState({
          inputValue: '',
          value: [...value, createOption(inputValue)],
        });
        event.preventDefault();
    }
  };

The line
value: [...value, createOption(inputValue)],
assumes ...value is always an array; this is NOT true;
value becomes null when you remove the last item, by clicking on the individual item;

Herein lies the bug: Inconsistent behaviour when removing the last item.
When removing an individual last item (click on small-x), value = null;
When removing all items (click on big-x), value = [];

Are you making a feature request?

No. it is a bug fix.
Please make the behavior consistent on item removal, so that even your own example works.

[Rall3n]

Duplicate of two issues:

• [Multi select] onChange returns null when no values instead of [] #3632 (also Multivalue - Removing all selected items send null on onChange #4021) Inconsistent behaviour when removing last item
• [Documentation Broken] Multi select text input documentation Uncaught TypeError: Invalid attempt to spread non-iterable instance. #4190 Broken Multi-select text input example

[dakur]

Related #4252

[ebonow]

Documentation Issue is a duplicate of #4190

[ebonow]

Closing this as the example and behavior have been fixed.

Related: #4373

[joe-oli]

So what is the simple answer? is removing all-items and removing last-item now setting the value to

1. null, or
2. [] ?

All the related issues have got me so confused.

[dakur]

@joe-oli I don't know in which issue I have read it, but the answer – as I understood it – is null for now, but may be rethought to [] in future.

[dakur]

@joe-oli I don't know in which issue I have read it, but the answer – as I understood it – is null for now, but may be rethought to [] in future.

Ha, it's here: #4293 (comment)

• Clearing the value from isMulit Select will return the value null to be consistent with current implementation.
  • It should be noted that it was discussed that this approach for returning null for multi Select can be confusing and will likely be reverted back to [] in v4.0

[ebonow]

So what is the simple answer? is removing all-items and removing last-item now setting the value to

1. null, or
2. [] ?

All the related issues have got me so confused.

@joe-oli,

null per the spec for v3 as described under Normalized Values
https://github.com/JedWatson/react-select/releases/tag/react-select%403.0.3

In a recent call with Jed, Nathan, and Thomas, the argument was made that null seems a bit confusing and while rolling the spec change back only one major release later seems to admit we got it wrong, ultimately the goal is to get it right.

Therefore in v3.2, the fix was made for consistency to return null when removing the last value to avoid breaking changes,

In v4, this will likely be reversed such that a multi with no value returns empty array instead.

Hope this is clears things up. Did you have any other questions or concerns regarding this approach?

[joe-oli]

Did you have any other questions or concerns regarding this approach

Thank you, no more questions now that it is clear what to expect.