Dispatch() just indicates an intent to change the state, it doesn’t actually change it… that’s where Reducers come in. Component A sends its state changes to the store, if Component B and C need this state change, they can get it from the store. If we had left our components communicating with each other, we would have created an error prone and unreadable codebase. Create an image featuring JavaScript code snippets and interview-related icons or graphics. Include the title ‘7 Essential JavaScript Interview Questions for Freshers’. With Redux, you can persist some of the app’s state to localStorage and restore it after a refresh.
If you have a small app you can continue using the default React approach to state management. But in large apps, it’s too hard to handle data flow this way. Adding Redux to the app allows keeping the global app state in a single store. If we have a component, such as a toggle element, that has some basic state that only it cares about, keep that in component state. Similarly, when building out an interactive form, we can treat the parent form component as the arbiter of the state of the form.
That means data cannot be sent from a child to a parent; it has to flow downward from the parent to the child. This thought model works very well with Redux where we cannot directly modify the state. Instead, we dispatch actions that intend to change the state, and then separately, we observe the resulting state changes. If the data needs to be passed from a parent to a child deep down the tree, this can still be accomplished using React utilities like Context.
It has an API so any component at any level of the app can access and update the state at any time. Redux helps you deal with shared state management, but like any tool, it has tradeoffs. It’s not designed to be the shortest or fastest way to write code. It’s intended to help answer the question “When did a certain slice of state change, and where did the data come from?”, with predictable behavior. There are more concepts to learn, and more code to write. It also adds some indirection to your code, and asks you to follow certain restrictions.
In this example, the useReducer hook is used to manage the state of a to-do list. The todoReducer function handles actions for adding and toggling to-do items, and the TodoList component uses the dispatch function to send these actions to the reducer. Examples of such global data include user information, theme details, and more. React Context excels in storing and managing this type of global data, enabling you to sidestep the need to pass props through multiple layers of components. Redux is a great tool for building large-scale applications requiring global state management.
In this guide, we discussed the major features of Redux and how Redux can be beneficial to your app. While Redux has many helpful features, that does not mean you should add Redux to all of your apps. With it, you can handle the initial render of the app by sending the state of an app to the server along with its response to the server request.
Normally such sites have a lot of components that need to share the same state. Applications that perform mainly simple actions and do not require server-side rendering probably don’t need Redux; their actions can be handled at the component level. This also eliminates the need to write more code, which is awesome in my opinion. In React (and other frameworks as well), communication between two components that don’t have a parent-child relationship is discouraged. React advises that if you must do this, you can build your global event system following Flux’s pattern — and that’s where Redux comes in.
The site is saving the logged-in member detail in the root component of the app. Now, it’s common for logged-in members to update their account page, make comments, and post on the site. In a simple what is redux and why it matters hello world app like this, we would’t have to use Redux. But when our app grows bigger, we’ll find redux very useful. Since React is tracking the change, it will re-render automatically for us.
💡 Reducers take the previous state of the app and return a new state based on the action passed to it. As pure functions, they do not change the data in the object passed to them or perform any side effect in the application. Given the same object, they should always produce the same result. Now imagine what happens when a state has to be shared between components that are far apart in the component tree. This makes the state difficult to maintain and less predictable. Most libraries, such as React and Angular, are built with a way for components to internally manage their state without the need for an external library or tool.
Redux allows developers to intercept all actions dispatched from components before they are passed to the reducer function. This interception is done via middleware, which are functions that call the next method received in an argument after processing the current action. Redux is used to maintain and update data across your applications for multiple components to share, all while remaining independent of the components.
We can assume that our e-commerce site has a bunch of other React-based functionality all of which at this point is managed in local component state. There is no need to rewrite any of the existing codebase with Redux. If you’re feeling the urge to go on a Redux-ification spree, stifle it. Whatever development-time savings you were able to promise with the introduction of Redux will soon vanish with that ill-conceived refactoring. One major benefit of Redux is the ability to navigate through the state’s history, allowing developers to observe how the state has changed throughout the app’s lifecycle.
The provider envelops the component tree where you anticipate the children to consume the state.. React can be employed independently without relying on external libraries. In many cases, you can utilise the built-in useState hook. For tasks such as form completion, button clicks, and UI interactions on your page, there’s no necessity for a state management library.
It will make all the states available to every component of our app. This method takes the name of the slice, the initial state, and the reducers. Can you see how difficult it is to manage working with a local state? You should be able to finally see the benefits of having a global state using React-Redux.