Q:

Updating component not working ReactJs

Please I would need a little bit of help here as I'm stuck.
I'm new to react, and I'm creating a component that gets a list of available languages from the backend and display them into a dropdown, then, once the user selects a language, the component should be updated to display the selected one. 
The problem I'm facing is that I don't know why, but the handleClick method is being executed three times(I have three available languages), either when the page is loaded, or when I select a new language. As a result, no matter what language I select, the last language in the list is always displayed as selected.
Please if you can have a quick look and tell me if you see something that can lead to this strange behaviour I would appreciate very much as this thing is driving me crazy.
Below the code:
import React from 'react';

class LocaleSwitcher extends React.Component {

constructor() {
    super();
    this.render = this.render.bind(this);
    this.handleClick = this.handleClick.bind(this);
    this.componentDidMount = this.componentDidMount.bind(this);
    this.state = {languages: [],selectedLocale:'En'};
    //This is only printed once
    console.log('constructor called');

}

handleClick(locale) {
    this.state.selectedLocale=locale;
    // This is printed three times, 
    // whenever I select a locale or when the page is loaded,why?????
    console.log('Selected Locale:' + locale);
}

render() {

    var component = this;
    component.selectedLanguage = this.props.defaultLanguage;
    return (<li>{this.state.selectedLocale}
        <ul className="dropdown">
            {
                this.state.languages.map(function (result, i) {
                    var url = "data/translations?locale=" + result.text;
                    return (<li key={i}><a onClick={component.handleClick(result.text)} href="#">{result.text}</a>
                    </li>);
                })

            }
        </ul>
    </li>);

}

componentDidMount() {
    var component = this;
    $.get('data/languages', function (result) {
        component.setState({languages: result});
    });
}

};

export class LocaleCurrencySwitcher extends React.Component {

render() {
    return (<ul className="switchers">
        <LocaleSwitcher defaultLanguage="En"/>
    </ul>);
}

};

A:

The problem is you are actually calling the handleClick method instead of assigning the function as a callback to the onClick attribute. You should remove the paratheses from the method and instead pass the text as a param.
onClick={component.handleClick.bind(null, result.text)}
In your case the handleClick method is being called instead of being used as a callback.

