ngOnChanges fires nonstop and makes application not to repond

Question

I built a component with the name of "gw-responsive-tabs" that has an input with variable (navLinks) which is an Array of the tabs I want to display. When I deliver the input data from the html like that:

<gw-responsive-tabs
  [navLinks]="[{ label: 'PENDING', path: '/mentoring/manage/pending' },
  { label: 'CURRENT', path: '/mentoring/manage/pending' }]">
</gw-responsive-tabs>

Then everything works as expected and I can see 2 tabs.

If I change it and send the same Data using a getter or a function than the ngOnChanges of the gw-responsive-tabs component fires nonstop with very high frequency and from that point the chrome is not responding.

get mentoringTabs(): Array<any> {
  return [{ label: 'PENDING', path: '/mentoring/manage/pending' }, { label: 'CURRENT', path: '/mentoring/manage/pending' }];
}

and the html:

<gw-responsive-tabs [navLinks]="mentoringTabs"></gw-responsive-tabs>

Any ideas what can cause this phenomena?

Answer 1

It's because of the change detection default strategy it's checked every sec or so And no matter what if the value of the return object is changed or not it re-render the template and because of that every time it's re rendering the html it's calling the get method which returns a new object everytime it's called and when the ngOnChanges compares it as the value is a new object now it runs in a loop.

here is the link to how change detection works https://angular-2-training-book.rangle.io/handout/change-detection/angular_1_vs_angular_2.html