Always have plan B when your federated component fails

#react #webpack

You are now used to the following code:

import React from "react";

const App1 = React.lazy(() => import("app1/App"));

function App() {
  return (
    <>
      <App1 />
      <div className="App">host</div>
    </>
  );
}

export default App;

But what if the host could not load the app1?
what if app1 site is down?

In these cases you will have the house of cards falls all over the place, meaning if single microfrontend fails in a page the entire page will throw an error.

We can agree that this is not the best solution, but what can we do in this case?

When you federate a component, you need to have a fallback component

Maybe you're thinking of suspense? but suspense is designed for components that will eventually be loaded rather than components that fails, what we need specifically is an ErrorBoundary

Checkout the code here:

// app1-wrapper.tsx

import { Suspense, Component } from 'react';


const App1 = React.lazy(() => import("app1/App"));

class App1Wrapper extends Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);
    this.state = { hasError: false };
  }

  static getDerivedStateFromError(error) {
    return { hasError: true };
  }

  render() {
    if (this.state.hasError) {
      return <div>Our plan B for app1</div>
    }

    return <App1/>
  }
}

export default App1Wrapper;

NOTE: the error boundary currently only supported on class based components

Now you import your wrapper safely inside your Host app.tsx

import React from "react";
import App1 from './app1-wrapper'

function App() {
  return (
    <>
      <App1 />
      <div className="App">host</div>
    </>
  );
}

export default App;