React

PostHog makes it easy to get data about traffic and usage of your React app. Integrating PostHog into your site enables analytics about user behavior, custom events capture, session recordings, feature flags, and more.

This guide will walk you through an example integration of PostHog using React and the posthog-js library.

Installation

For Next.js, we recommend following the Next.js integration guide instead.

Install posthog-js using your package manager

Terminal

yarn add posthog-js
# or
npm install --save posthog-js

Add your environment variables to your .env.local file and to your hosting provider (e.g. Vercel, Netlify, AWS). You can find your project API key in the PostHog app under Project Settings > API Keys.

.env.local

REACT_APP_PUBLIC_POSTHOG_KEY=<ph_project_api_key>
REACT_APP_PUBLIC_POSTHOG_HOST=https://us.i.posthog.com

Integrate PostHog at the root of your app (src/index.js for the default create-react-app).

React

// src/index.js
import React from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom/client';
import App from './App';

import { PostHogProvider} from 'posthog-js/react'

const options = {
  api_host: process.env.REACT_APP_PUBLIC_POSTHOG_HOST,
}

const root = ReactDOM.createRoot(document.getElementById('root'));
root.render(
  <React.StrictMode>
    <PostHogProvider 
      apiKey={process.env.REACT_APP_PUBLIC_POSTHOG_KEY}
      options={options}
    >
      <App />
    </PostHogProvider>
  </React.StrictMode>
);

Usage

PostHog Provider

The React context provider makes it easy to access the posthog-js library in your app.

The provider can either take an initialized client instance OR an API key and an optional options object.

With an initialized client instance:

React

// src/index.js
import posthog from 'posthog-js';
import { PostHogProvider} from 'posthog-js/react'

posthog.init(
  process.env.REACT_APP_PUBLIC_POSTHOG_KEY,
  {
    api_host: process.env.REACT_APP_PUBLIC_POSTHOG_HOST,
  }
);

const root = ReactDOM.createRoot(document.getElementById('root'));
root.render(
  <React.StrictMode>
    <PostHogProvider client={posthog}>
      <App />
    </PostHogProvider>
  </React.StrictMode>
);

or with an API key and optional options object:

React

// src/index.js
import { PostHogProvider} from 'posthog-js/react'

const options = {
  api_host: process.env.REACT_APP_PUBLIC_POSTHOG_HOST,
}

const root = ReactDOM.createRoot(document.getElementById('root'));
root.render(
  <React.StrictMode>
    <PostHogProvider 
      apiKey={process.env.REACT_APP_PUBLIC_POSTHOG_KEY}
      options={options}
    >
      <App />
    </PostHogProvider>
  </React.StrictMode>
);

Using posthog-js functions

By default, the posthog-js library automatically captures pageviews, element clicks, inputs, and more. Autocapture can be tuned in with the configuration options.

If you want to use the library to identify users, capture events, use feature flags, or use other features, you can access the initialized posthog-js library using the usePostHog hook.

Do not directly import posthog apart from installation as shown above. This will likely cause errors as the library might not be initialized yet. Initialization is handled automatically when you use the PostHogProvider and hook.

All the methods of the library are available and can be used as described in the posthog-js documentation.

React

import { usePostHog } from 'posthog-js/react'
import { useEffect } from 'react'
import { useUser, useLogin } from '../lib/user'

function App() {
    const posthog = usePostHog()
    const login = useLogin()
    const user = useUser()

    useEffect(() => {
        if (user) {
            // Identify sends an event, so you want may want to limit how often you call it
            posthog?.identify(user.id, {
                email: user.email,
            })
            posthog?.group('company', user.company_id)
        }
    }, [posthog, user.id, user.email, user.company_id])

    const loginClicked = () => {
        posthog?.capture('clicked_log_in')
        login()
    }

    return (
        <div className="App">
            {/* Fire a custom event when the button is clicked */}
            <button onClick={() => posthog?.capture('button_clicked')}>Click me</button>
            {/* This button click event is autocaptured by default */}
            <button data-attr="autocapture-button">Autocapture buttons</button>
            {/* This button click event is not autocaptured */}
            <button className="ph-no-capture">Ignore certain elements</button>
            <button onClick={loginClicked}>Login</button>
        </div>
    )
}

export default App

TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined

If you see the error TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading '...') this is likely because you tried to call a posthog function when posthog was not initialized (such as during the initial render). On purpose, we still render the children even if PostHog is not initialized so that your app still loads even if PostHog can't load.

To fix this error, add a check that posthog has been initialized such as:

React

useEffect(() => {
  posthog?.capture('test') // using optional chaining (recommended)

  if (posthog) {
    posthog.capture('test') // using an if statement
  }
}, [posthog])

Typescript helps protect against these errors.

Feature Flags

PostHog's feature flags enable you to safely deploy and roll back new features.

There are two ways to implement feature flags in React:

Using hooks.
Using the <PostHogFeature> component.

Method 1: Using hooks

PostHog provides several hooks to make it easy to use feature flags in your React app.

Hook	Description
`useFeatureFlagEnabled`	Returns a boolean indicating whether the feature flag is enabled.
`useFeatureFlagPayload`	Returns the payload of the feature flag.
`useFeatureFlagVariantKey`	Returns the variant key of the feature flag.
`useActiveFeatureFlags`	Returns an array of active feature flags.

Example 1: Using a boolean feature flag

React

import { useFeatureFlagEnabled } from 'posthog-js/react'

function App() {
  const showWelcomeMessage = useFeatureFlagEnabled('flag-key')

  return (
    <div className="App">
      {
        showWelcomeMessage ? (
          <div>
            <h1>Welcome!</h1>
            <p>Thanks for trying out our feature flags.</p>
          </div>
        ) : (
          <div>
            <h2>No welcome message</h2>
            <p>Because the feature flag evaluated to false.</p>
          </div>
        )
      }
    </div>
  );
}

export default App;

Example 2: Using a multivariate feature flag

React

import { useFeatureFlagVariantKey } from 'posthog-js/react'

function App() {
  const variantKey = useFeatureFlagVariantKey('show-welcome-message')
  let welcomeMessage = '' 
  if (variantKey === 'variant-a') {
    welcomeMessage = 'Welcome to the Alpha!'
  } else if (variantKey === 'variant-b') {
    welcomeMessage = 'Welcome to the Beta!'
  }  

  return (
    <div className="App">
      {
        welcomeMessage ? (
          <div>
            <h1>{welcomeMessage}</h1>
            <p>Thanks for trying out our feature flags.</p>
          </div>
        ) : (
          <div>
            <h2>No welcome message</h2>
            <p>Because the feature flag evaluated to false.</p>
          </div>
        )
      }
    </div>
  );
}

export default App;

Example 3: Using a flag payload

React

import { useFeatureFlagPayload } from 'posthog-js/react'

function App() {
  const payload = useFeatureFlagPayload('show-welcome-message')

    return (
                <>
                {
                    payload?.welcomeMessage ? (
                        <div className="welcome-message">
                            <h2>{payload?.welcomeTitle}</h2>
                            <p>{payload.welcomeMessage}</p>
                        </div>
                    ) : <div>
                        <h2>No welcome message</h2>
                        <p>Because the feature flag evaluated to false.</p>
                    </div>
                }
        </>
    )
}

Method 2: Using the PostHogFeature component

The PostHogFeature component simplifies code by handling feature flag related logic.

It also automatically captures metrics, like how many times a user interacts with this feature.

Note: You still need the PostHogProvider at the top level for this to work.

Here is an example:

React

import { PostHogFeature } from 'posthog-js/react'

function App() {

    return (
        <PostHogFeature flag='show-welcome-message' match={true}>
            <div>
                <h1>Hello</h1>
                <p>Thanks for trying out our feature flags.</p>
            </div>
        </PostHogFeature>
    )
}

The match on the component can be either true, or the variant key, to match on a specific variant.
If you also want to show a default message, you can pass these in the fallback attribute.

If you wish to customise logic around when the component is considered visible, you can pass in visibilityObserverOptions to the feature. These take the same options as the IntersectionObserver API. By default, we use a threshold of 0.1.

Payloads

If your flag has a payload, you can pass a function to children whose first argument is the payload. For example:

React

import { PostHogFeature } from 'posthog-js/react'

function App() {

    return (
        <PostHogFeature flag='show-welcome-message' match={true}>
           {(payload) => {
                return (
                    <div>
                        <h1>{payload.welcomeMessage}</h1>
                        <p>Thanks for trying out our feature flags.</p>
                    </div>
                )
           }}
        </PostHogFeature>
    )
}

Request timeout

You can configure the feature_flag_request_timeout_ms parameter when initializing your PostHog client to set a flag request timeout. This helps prevent your code from being blocked in the case when PostHog's servers are too slow to respond. By default, this is set at 3 seconds.

JavaScript

posthog.init('<ph_project_api_key>', { 
        api_host: 'https://us.i.posthog.com',
        feature_flag_request_timeout_ms: 3000 // Time in milliseconds. Default is 3000 (3 seconds).
    }
)

Error handling

When using the PostHog SDK, it's important to handle potential errors that may occur during feature flag operations. Here's an example of how to wrap PostHog SDK methods in an error handler:

JavaScript

function handleFeatureFlag(client, flagKey, distinctId) {
    try {
        const isEnabled = client.isFeatureEnabled(flagKey, distinctId);
        console.log(`Feature flag '${flagKey}' for user '${distinctId}' is ${isEnabled ? 'enabled' : 'disabled'}`);
        return isEnabled;
    } catch (error) {
        console.error(`Error fetching feature flag '${flagKey}': ${error.message}`);
        // Optionally, you can return a default value or throw the error
        // return false; // Default to disabled
        throw error;
    }
}

// Usage example
try {
    const flagEnabled = handleFeatureFlag(client, 'new-feature', 'user-123');
    if (flagEnabled) {  
        // Implement new feature logic
    } else {
        // Implement old feature logic
    }
} catch (error) {
    // Handle the error at a higher level
    console.error('Feature flag check failed, using default behavior');
    // Implement fallback logic
}

Bootstrapping Flags

Since there is a delay between initializing PostHog and fetching feature flags, feature flags are not always available immediately. This makes them unusable if you want to do something like redirecting a user to a different page based on a feature flag.

To have your feature flags available immediately, you can initialize PostHog with precomputed values until it has had a chance to fetch them. This is called bootstrapping. After the SDK fetches feature flags from PostHog, it will use those flag values instead of bootstrapped ones.

For details on how to implement bootstrapping, see our bootstrapping guide.

Experiments (A/B tests)

Since experiments use feature flags, the code for running an experiment is very similar to the feature flags code:

React

// You can either use the `useFeatureFlagVariantKey` hook,
// or you can use the feature flags component - https://posthog.com/docs/libraries/react#feature-flags-react-component

// Method one: using the useFeatureFlagVariantKey hook
import { useFeatureFlagVariantKey } from 'posthog-js/react'

function App() {
    const variant = useFeatureFlagVariantKey('experiment-feature-flag-key')
    if (variant == 'variant-name') {
        // do something
    }
}

// Method two: using the feature flags component
import { PostHogFeature } from 'posthog-js/react'

function App() {
    return (
        <PostHogFeature flag='experiment-feature-flag-key' match={'variant-name'}>
            <!-- the component to show -->
        </PostHogFeature>
    )
}

// You can also test your code by overriding the feature flag:
// e.g., posthog.featureFlags.override({'experiment-feature-flag-key': 'test'})

It's also possible to run experiments without using feature flags.

Which features are available in this library?

Installation

Usage

PostHog Provider

Using posthog-js functions

TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined

Feature Flags

Method 1: Using hooks

Example 1: Using a boolean feature flag

Example 2: Using a multivariate feature flag

Example 3: Using a flag payload

Method 2: Using the PostHogFeature component

Payloads

Request timeout

Error handling

Bootstrapping Flags

Experiments (A/B tests)

Questions?

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React Native

Ian Vanagas

Eli Kinsey

Lior Neu-ner