Understanding React's useEffect Hook

React's useEffect hook is one of the most important hooks in React's ecosystem. It helps you handle side effects in your functional components, such as data fetching, subscriptions, or manually changing the DOM.

What is useEffect?

useEffect is a hook that lets you perform side effects in function components. Think of it as React's way of handling lifecycle methods like componentDidMount, componentDidUpdate, and componentWillUnmount combined into a single API.