Awesome
Chopped Redux
This library is an implementation of @gaearon Redux, which claims to be a "Predictable state container for JavaScript apps".
Redux is based on Facebook's Flux but it's a lot more simple a straightforward. Chopped Redux follows the same principles and ideas but cutting off features, namely all utility methods and ES2015/7 magic. Chopped is practically the same as Redux's 1.0 core, just read the source.
This project follows SemVer.
Motivation
In the beginning, Redux was a React thing. So I wanted to have a similar library not tight to any rendering/view-layer library, and I was mainly inspired by this and this, ideas which made the Flux unidirectional data-flow very simple. Redux is free from React and free from class
es starting at 1.0, so there's no reason for you to use Chopped instead of the genuine Redux if you don't find any of the key differences useful to you.
Key differences from Redux
- There’s no init
@@redux/INIT
dispatch oncreateStore()
, you need to do that yourself when you know it’s time to initialize your state. - You can pass anything to
dispatch()
, not only a plain object, it's your responsibility to handle that in theupdate
function. - You can call
dispatch()
with no arguments (an empty object will get dispatched), useful for initializing. - The dispatched
action
gets passed to listeners. - The
reducer
function is calledupdate
(this is just aesthetics).
Install
With npm
do:
npm install chopped-redux --save
Usage
This is how it works:
- You
dispatch
anaction
- The
state
gets updated based on thataction
- All
listeners
get notified of thestate
change
var createStore = require('chopped-redux')
function update (state, action) {
state = state || 0 // always initialize state if empty
if (action.type === 'increment') {
return state + 1
}
return state // always return state
}
var store = createStore(update)
var action = { type: 'increment' } // actions are objects
store.subscribe(function () {
console.log(store.getState())
})
store.dispatch(action)
// => 1
Guidelines for success:
- All state of your app goes into
state
, a single object - The
update
function is pure (it should only update and return newstate
and nothing else) - The
update
function always return some initial state if undefined. actions
are plain objects with at least one property:type
(String), and an optionalpayload
(Mixed).- You do async inside functions (action dispatchers) that call
dispatch
when done
API
var createStore = require('chopped-redux')
Chopped Redux exports a single factory function that returns an object with four methods:
dispatch
getState
subscribe
The factory has a single mandatory param which is a update
function.
createStore(update[, initialState])
- update
Function
- initialState
Mixed
Anything you want to hold your state in
The update
function should have the following signature:
function (state, action) {
// do something with state depending on the action type,
// ideally generating a fresh new (immutable) value
return state
}
What happens internally on every action dispatch is basically this:
state = update(state, action)
dispatch(action)
- Returns
undefined
- action
Object
getState()
- Returns
Object
The current state
subscribe(listener)
- Returns
Function
A function to remove the listener - listener
Function
A callback that gets fired after every state update
Old replaceState
In previous versions (<=4.0.0) there was a replaceState
method, this was a shortcut for an action that can be easily achieved in a pure Redux manner: By dispatching a REPLACE_STATE
-typed action and swapping the new state in the update
function.
Async and action creators
Handling async stuff in vanilla Flux is a pain. In the beginning of Flux we were making API calls inside our Stores, that turned out to be a bad idea. So they came up with this pompous concept of Action Creators to confuse us all (at least for a while). [If you’re still confused, Action Creators are functions that return Actions, which are simply objects; so Action == plain object; Action Creator == function that creates an Action object.] Apparently no-one knows how to do this right.
In Redux there’s middleware. The thunk middleware allows you to literally dispatch a function, and your Action Creators look like this:
function foo (bar) {
// do async stuff
return function (dispatch) {
dispatch({
type: FOO,
bar: bar
})
}
}
// after binding it and what not, call it
foo()
I prefer a simpler and more explicit approach based only on the necessity of delaying the dispatch, namely this:
function foo (dispatch, payload) {
// do async stuff
dispatch({
type: FOO,
payload: payload
})
}
foo(store.dispatch, { foo: ‘bar’ })
a function in which the dispatch
callback always gets passed-in as first argument. You could also pass in the very store
instance if you need to getState()
.
I would call this an action dispatcher function, because that’s what it does. There’s no nesting, no type checking, no complexity. You just pass in a callback for dispatching an action with some payload. You’re just delegating dispatch
ing actions to a helper function to do some things before the dispatch.
If you don’t need async, simply dispatch
the action directly and you’ve got one less function to care about.
store.dispatch({ type: FOO, payload: payload })
If you want to be consistent, go always the async way no matter what.
No more ActionCreators.addTodo(text)
.
Further reading
A gist by @vslinko
The Evolution of Flux Frameworks
License
MIT