npm install react-nil

This is a custom react renderer that only renders null, literally. That sounds crazy to you? Well, think of it, React can render visual components, they return a view, or logical components, without a view.

Clearly nothing to see here, moving on ... :)

Step back a moment and think about how hard managing side effects and async tasks in Node is. In React on the other hand all of this comes inbuilt and trivial to manage: you pack away side-effects into useEffect, memoize tasks via useMemo, there is Suspense to orchestrate async ops, context to communicate data, optional concurrency to maintain fast response. And of course — the entire React eco system is available: Redux, Recoil, Jotai, GraphQl, whatever you need.

You can try a small demo here: https://codesandbox.io/s/react-nil-mvpry

How does it work?

import { render } from "react-nil"

function Foo() {
  const [active, set] = useState(false)
  useEffect(() => void setInterval(() => set((a) => !a), 1000), [])
  console.log(active)

  // This is a logical component without a view, it renders nothing,
  // but it has a real lifecycle and is managed by React regardless.
  return null
}

render(<Foo />)