Brittney Postma

Posted on Apr 24, 2020 • Updated on Oct 26, 2020 • Originally published at console-logs.netlify.app

Explain Redux like I'm 5!

#redux #react #reactredux #toolkit

TLDR: Redux is a state management library that you can add to projects to help keep it organized. Here's some links: Redux.js.org, github repo, or checkout the Code Sandbox

Hi, I'm Brittney and I'm an instructor over at ZTM Academy and the owner, designer, and developer at bDesigned. You can find more dev notes by me at Console Logs.

What is Redux?

Redux is a tool that helps manage the state of an application. Think of state as a box where we keep all of our toys. To play with our toys, we need to keep them organized so we can find them. Redux keeps your state organized and in one place. It also, keeps our things protected so they are harder to break. A lot of developers tend to think that Redux can only be used with React, another JavaScript library, but it can actually be ran alongside any view library. Redux has a small weight of only 2kb and a large group of people that are constantly improving and adding things to it.

Redux Flux Pattern

Redux follows a unidirectional or one direction flow of data. It starts in the view, the item on a screen that a user sees when visiting your application. If a user clicks a button or types something in, we expect something to happen. This is called an action and when an action happens, we need to make sure to change what is displayed to the user. To do this, Redux has a few steps it goes through. It starts when the user does an action in our application. That action is dispatched, that's just a fancy word for sent, through a reducer function. A reducer simply condenses multiple things that could be happening into one final object to send back to the user. It needs to be a pure function, every time you input the same thing, you should always get the same result returned. The reducer then hands that new condensed object back to the store. The store is the container, our box, which holds the state. It then updates the state and gives it to the view to update. Now the user is seeing what they expect on the screen!

Why Redux?

Here are a few reasons you may want to add Redux to your project.

Good for managing large state.
Useful for sharing data between components.
Predictable state management.

Redux does these 3 things really well, by using these 3 principles:

1. Having a single source of truth, a single large object that describes the entire state of the application.
2. State is read only or immutable, each action creates a new version of state.
3. Only changes state using pure functions, functions that given the same input always have the same output.

Getting Started With Redux

Open a terminal to the directory of your application. To install Redux you can type npm i redux if you are using npm or yarn add redux if you use yarn. If you are in a React application, there is a separate package called React Redux that needs to be installed as well. To install React Redux you would type npm i react-redux for npm or yarn add react-redux for yarn. Actually, there is a template of create-react-app that includes Redux. To start a new application with both React and Redux run npx create-react-app my-app-name --template redux.

Setting Up React Redux

If you have a project running on React that you want to add Redux to, there is some setup involved to convert your app over. You need to have added both the redux and react-redux packages to your app. React Redux has a <Provider /> component, which allows the app to access the Redux store. You go into your src/index.js file and around your <App /> component, you wrap the Provider component.

import React from "react";
import ReactDOM from "react-dom";

import { Provider } from "react-redux";
import store from "./redux/store";

import Connect from "./Connect";

const rootElement = document.getElementById("root");
ReactDOM.render(
  <Provider store={store}>
    <Connect />
  </Provider>,
  rootElement
);

Now we haven't actually created our store yet, so lets do that next. Everyone seems to have their own folder structure that they like when creating an application, this is just one way of setting up your files. If you are more comfortable with your understanding of importing and exporting files, feel free to find the way that works best for you. In your src folder inside your React application create a new folder called redux and inside of that create store.js. Inside of store.js, is where we will create our Redux store and connect it with the reducers. We need to import createStore and applyMiddleware from Redux, our rootReducer that we have not created yet, and some middleWare packages to handle the async functions. We also need to install redux-thunk and redux-logger into our app. Use npm i redux-thunk redux-logger for npm and yarn add redux-thunk redux-logger for yarn. The createStore function from Redux takes 3 optional arguments.

1. reducer - A function that reduces any actions into 1 new state tree and returns the next state object.
2. [preloadedState] - The initial or default state.
3. [enhancer] - Optionally enhance the store with middleware or other 3rd party capabilities. Redux only comes with 1 enhancer, applyMiddleware(). In this app, our initial state is going to be created inside the reducers file, so we do not have a preloadedState.

import { createStore, applyMiddleware } from 'redux'

// middleware for async reducers
import thunkMiddleware from "redux-thunk";
import { createLogger } from "redux-logger";

// reducer file we have not created yet
import { rootReducer } from './reducers.js'

const logger = createLogger();

// from redux call createStore(reducer, [preloadedState], [enhancer])
const store = createStore(
  rootReducer,
  applyMiddleware(thunkMiddleware, logger)
);

export default store

Now that we have created our store, we will create our actions objects. Create a new file inside the redux folder called actions.js. As your app grows, this is where you may opt to create a folder with a separate file for each different action. As this is a smaller app, I am putting them into 1 actions.js file. Each action will take in the event that happened and a copy of the current state. It then updates the payload or data and returns an updated copy of the state. We also need to create a file called constants.js to keep track of all of our type constants and import them into our actions.js file. The constants.js file is optional, it is a common practice in larger applications to hold all of the constant names of the action types.

// constants.js
export const CHANGE_SEARCHFIELD = 'CHANGE_SEARCHFIELD';
export const REQUEST_ROBOTS_PENDING = 'REQUEST_ROBOTS_PENDING';
export const REQUEST_ROBOTS_SUCCESS = 'REQUEST_ROBOTS_SUCCESS';
export const REQUEST_ROBOTS_FAILED = 'REQUEST_ROBOTS_FAILED';

// actions.js
import {
  CHANGE_SEARCHFIELD,
  REQUEST_ROBOTS_PENDING,
  REQUEST_ROBOTS_SUCCESS,
  REQUEST_ROBOTS_FAILED
 } from './constants'


export const setSearchField = (text) => ({ type: CHANGE_SEARCHFIELD, payload: text })

export const requestRobots = () => (dispatch) => {
  dispatch({ type: REQUEST_ROBOTS_PENDING })
  const apiCall = (link) => fetch(link).then(response => response.json())
  apiCall('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users')
    .then(data => dispatch({ type: REQUEST_ROBOTS_SUCCESS, payload: data }))
    .catch(error => dispatch({ type: REQUEST_ROBOTS_FAILED, payload: error }))
}

Now we need to create our reducers. Here, we probably should go ahead and create a new folder called reducers inside the redux folder. Then create a file for each action reducer. I've created posts.js, comments.js, and rootReducer.js, which will combine all of our reducer functions into one function. Now we need to write our reducer functions. In posts.js, we will take our old state in and create an updated version of it, with the likes incremented by 1. In comments.js,

import {
  CHANGE_SEARCHFIELD,
  REQUEST_ROBOTS_PENDING,
  REQUEST_ROBOTS_SUCCESS,
  REQUEST_ROBOTS_FAILED
} from "./constants";
import { combineReducers } from "redux";

const initialStateSearch = {
  searchField: ""
};

export const searchRobots = (state = initialStateSearch, action = {}) => {
  switch (action.type) {
    case CHANGE_SEARCHFIELD:
      return Object.assign({}, state, { searchField: action.payload });
    default:
      return state;
  }
};

const initialStateRobots = {
  robots: [],
  isPending: true
};

export const requestRobots = (state = initialStateRobots, action = {}) => {
  switch (action.type) {
    case REQUEST_ROBOTS_PENDING:
      return Object.assign({}, state, { isPending: true });
    case REQUEST_ROBOTS_SUCCESS:
      return Object.assign({}, state, {
        robots: action.payload,
        isPending: false
      });
    case REQUEST_ROBOTS_FAILED:
      return Object.assign({}, state, { error: action.payload });
    default:
      return state;
  }
};

// take the 2 reducer functions and combine into 1
export const rootReducer = combineReducers({
  requestRobots,
  searchRobots
});

UPDATED: Connect the App

To use the recommended Hooks API I have converted the App Component from a Class to a functional component and used hooks to connect the app. I have left the old way explained below and have commented it out in the Code Sandbox so you can see both ways.

To connect our app using hooks, we need to go into src/App.js. First, we need to import the hooks we need to use.

useEffect - a method from react.
useDispatch - a method from react-redux.
useSelector - a method from react-redux.

The useEffect hook is needed to replace our componentDidMount function to load the robots. The useDispatch and useSelector from react-redux will replace the mapStateToProps and mapDispatchToProps functions in the Connect Component.

import React, { useEffect } from "react";
import { useDispatch, useSelector } from "react-redux";
import { setSearchField, requestRobots } from "./redux/actions";
import "./styles.css";

// components
import CardList from "./components/CardList";
import SearchBox from "./components/SearchBox";
import ErrorBoundary from "./components/ErrorBoundary";

const App = () => {
  // replaces mapDispatchToProps
  const searchField = useSelector(state => state.searchRobots.searchField);
  const robots = useSelector(state => state.requestRobots.robots);
  const isPending = useSelector(state => state.requestRobots.isPending);

  const filteredRobots = robots.filter(robot => {
    return robot.name.toLowerCase().includes(searchField.toLowerCase());
  });

  // replaces mapDispatchToProps
  const dispatch = useDispatch();

  const onSearchChange = e => dispatch(setSearchField(e.target.value));

  useEffect(() => {
    dispatch(requestRobots());
  }, [dispatch]);

  return (
    <div className="body">
      <div className="stickyHeader">
        <h1 className="f1">RoboFriends</h1>
        <SearchBox searchChange={onSearchChange} />
      </div>
      {isPending ? (
        <h1>Loading</h1>
      ) : (
        <ErrorBoundary>
          <CardList robots={filteredRobots} />
        </ErrorBoundary>
      )}
    </div>
  );
};

OLD WAY: Connect the App

The last thing we have left to do is connect our app to the store. In our src folder create a new component called Connect.js. In Connect.js, we need to import connect from react-redux and set up 2 functions: mapStateToProps and mapDispatchToProps. In mapStateToProps, we are giving access to the state or store to all the children components. In mapDispatchToProps, we are sending the events to the correct actions.

import { connect } from "react-redux";
import { setSearchField, requestRobots } from "./redux/actions";
import App from "./App";

const mapStateToProps = state => ({
  searchField: state.searchRobots.searchField,
  robots: state.requestRobots.robots,
  isPending: state.requestRobots.isPending
});

const mapDispatchToProps = dispatch => ({
  onSearchChange: event => dispatch(setSearchField(event.target.value)),
  onRequestRobots: () => dispatch(requestRobots())
});

// we take the 2 functions and connect them to our App component
const Connect = connect(
  mapStateToProps,
  mapDispatchToProps
)(App);

export default Connect;

Finally, our app is fully connected to Redux! This is our final folder structure.

-public
-src
  -components
    -Card.js
    -CardList.js
    -ErrorBoundary.js
    -SearchBox.js
    -component-styles.css
  -redux
    -actions.js
    -constants.js
    -reducers.js
    -store.js
  App.js
  Connect.js
  index.js
  styles.css
package.json

You can find the code for the rest of the components here or checkout the Code Sandbox. Thanks for joining me and please remember to like the article if it helped you!

Top comments (12)

Mark Erikson • Apr 24 '20

Hi, I'm a Redux maintainer. Please check out our new official Redux Toolkit package. It includes utilities to simplify several common Redux use cases, including store setup, defining reducers, immutable update logic, and even creating entire "slices" of state at once:

redux-toolkit.js.org

Also, while connect still works fine, we're now recommending that folks use our React-Redux hooks API as the default.

Brittney Postma • Apr 25 '20

Thank you, I'm going to try and convert it over and will update the article!

Brittney Postma • Apr 25 '20

I updated the article and the app if you wanted to take a second look. Thank you for your input!

Omar White • Apr 25 '20

Hey Mark, can you elaborate on why you’re recommending the react-redux hooks as the default. What are the pro’s of that approach as opposed to wrapping components in connect.

Mark Erikson • Apr 25 '20

connect still works fine, and we're going to continue maintaining and supporting it indefinitely.

But, useSelector and useDispatch are shorter and easier to work with in many cases, and they definitely work better with TypeScript. There's less indirection, less code, and it's more obvious what's happening.

Hooks in general (and especially React-Redux hooks) do bring up a different set of tradeoffs, which I talked about in my post Thoughts on React Hooks, Redux, and Separation of Concerns and my ReactBoston 2019 talk on "Hooks, HOCs, and Tradeoffs". I'd encourage you to go through those.