reducks

Tools for modular state management using redux and redux-saga. The approach and name are inspired by the modular redux proposal.

Use

Redux provides all the tools needed to create a single consolidated state storage and a messaging system used by it but decoupled from it. It doesn't provide any opinions on how to use this system. Having a singleton messaging system and state storage (together with the way these two are implemented) makes for some serious benefits to code structure, testing, and maintenance, but it also brings with it some specific challenges. One of them is side-effect management, another code reuse. This package picks one of the existing solutions to the former and provides tools to deal with the latter. Then it also provides some generic abstractions built on top of the included tooling.

Note: One of the basic units of Redux state management is most often called "actions". In the author's view the name is confusing and often leads to flawed mental model of Redux. In this guide the term "messages" is used instead and the term "actions" is used for message creators.

Assumptions

The tools in this package assume the use of

• redux-saga for side-effects and
• FSA format for messages.

Concepts

A basic unit of state management using Redux has one or more of the following:

• message types - constants used to identify messages,
• actions - functions that [receive some parameters and] create messages,
• reducer - function that receives the current state and an action to produce the next state,
• selectors - functions that receive state and return some specific piece of data,
• effects - side-effects triggered by messages that can lead to other messages being dispatched (here we create effects using saga).

Message types, reducers, and effects are considered internal implementation details of the state management part of the application/module. Types provide the semantic bridge between messages and reducers; reducers and effects are registered with the Redux engine to be executed automatically when messages are dispatched.

Selectors and actions form the "public API" of state management, allowing (read-only) access to well-defined pieces of the state and well-defined interactions (encapsulating the actual global state structure and global message types).

A unit of state management containing the above is called a duck. It can look e.g. like this:

import { updateIn } from '@hon2a/icepick-fp'
import { takeEvery, call, select } from 'redux-saga/effects'

import { getTodoFilter } from './ui'
import { saveTodos } from '../api'

// message type(s)
export const ADD_TODO_ITEM = 'ADD_TODO_ITEM'
// action(s)
export const addTodo = label => ({ type: ADD_TODO_ITEM, payload: { label, isDone: false, createdAt: Date.now() } })
// reducer
export const reducer = (state, { type, payload }) => (type === ADD_TODO_ITEM)
  ? updateIn('some.todos', todos => [...todos, payload])(state)
  : state
// selector(s)
const getAllTodos = state => state.some.todos
export const getVisibleTodos = state => getAllTodos(state).filter(getTodoFilter(state))
// effect(s)
export function* saga() {
  yield takeEvery(ADD_TODO_ITEM, function* saveTodosSaga() {
    yield call(saveTodos, yield select(getAllTodos))
  })
}

Modular Ducks (Generics)

As shown above, a duck most often manages just a single specific piece of the global state, but it also sometimes needs to depend on other ducks' messages or state (through selectors). It doesn't have to know the details about the rest of the state, but it does need to know where its own state bit is located. It also doesn't need to know about all the other global message types, but it must not conflict with them when defining own types. This means that a duck is very much "concrete" and can't easily be reused. However, the need for reuse arises in state management just as often as with any other code. The createDuckFactory helper is provided to deal with this concern (also under the ducks alias). Supplied with a path descriptor, it returns a set of creators for all of the above constructs in need of "namespacing" - message types, reducers, selectors. Using it in the above example would yield:

// ... (imports)
import { createDuckFactory } from '@wisersolutions/reducks'

const { defineType, createAction, createReducer, createSelector } = createDuckFactory('some.todos')
// message type(s)
export const ADD_TODO_ITEM = defineType('ADD') // 'some.todos.ADD'
// action(s)
export const addTodo = createAction(ADD_TODO_ITEM, label => ({ label, isDone: false, createdAt: Date.now() }))
// reducer
export const reducer = createReducer(
  (state, { type, payload }) => (type === ADD_TODO_ITEM) ? [...state, payload] : state
)
// selector(s)
const getAllTodos = createSelector()
// ... (the rest, unchanged)

While this helps avoid conflicts in message types (and the defineType helper actually checks for conflicts as well) and helps simplify the reducer code, it doesn't as of itself make the code reusable. But now that all of the duck parts are created with the duck factory helpers, making it portable is as simple as wrapping the whole duck in a function that takes the duck factory as argument.

export const todoListDuck = (getTodosFilter, initialState = []) => ({ defineType, createAction, createReducer, createSelector }) => {
  const ADD = defineType('ADD')
  const add = createAction(ADD, /* ... */)
  const reducer = createReducer(
    (state = initialState, { type, payload }) => (type === ADD) ? [...state, payload] : state
  )
  const selector = state => createSelector()(state).filter(getTodosFilter(state))
  function* saga() { /* ... */ }
  return { reducer, saga, ADD, add, selector }
}

Need multiple to-do list state managers? No problem.

import { getTodosFilter } from './ui' // let's say the filter is common to both lists

const firstTodoListDuck = todoListDuck(getTodosFilter)(createDuckFactory('todoLists.first'))
const { add: addToFirstTodos, selector: getFirstTodos } = firstTodoListDuck

const secondTodoListDuck = todoListDuck(getTodosFilter)(createDuckFactory('todoLists.second'))
const { add: addToSecondTodos, selector: getSecondTodos } = secondTodoListDuck

const { reducer, saga } = composeDucks(firstTodoListDuck, secondTodoListDuck)
export { reducer, saga, addToFirstTodos, getFirstTodos, addToSecondTodos, getSecondTodos }

Async Actions

Simple message creators are nice, but real app needs to perform asynchronous effects and more often than not, the status of their execution is itself a state that needs to be reflected. To standardise this, the package introduces a defineAsyncType helper that instead of a single string constant produces an object containing the PENDING, SUCCESS, and FAILURE properties - message types. More helpers are provided to help perform async effects that dispatch messages with these async types.

API

Core

The core API provides tools to help create and combine the state management pieces.

Types

defineType

defineType manages a registry of types and crashes on conflicts.

const ADD_TODO = defineType('ADD_TODO') // 'ADD_TODO'
const DO_SOMETHING_ELSE = defineType('ADD_TODO') // error (conflict)

defineAsyncType

const SAVE_TODOS = defineAsyncType('SAVE_TODOS') // { PENDING: 'SAVE_TODOS.PENDING', SUCCESS: '...', FAILURE: '...' }
const DO_SOMETHING_ELSE = defineType('SAVE_TODOS.SUCCESS') // error (conflict)

Actions

createAction

const addTodo = createAction(ADD_TODO, label => ({ label })) // { type: ADD_TODO, payload: { label } }

Reducers

composeReducers

const reducer = composeReducers(
  (state, { type, payload }) => (type === ADD_TODO) ? updateIn('todos', todos => [...todos, payload])(state) : state,
  (state, { type, payload }) => (type === SAVE_TODOS.SUCCESS) ? assocIn('lastSavedAt', Date.now())(state) : state,
  // ...
)
const initialState = { todos: [], lastSavedAt: undefined }
const state1 = reducer(initialState, { type: ADD_TODO, payload: { label: 'Build a time machine' } })
const state2 = reducer(state1, { type: SAVE_TODOS.SUCCESS })
// { todos: [{ label: 'Build a time machine' }], lastSavedAt: /* previous line execution timestamp */ }

combineReducers

const reducer = combineReducers({
  todos: (state = [], { type, payload }) => (type === ADD_TODO) ? [...state, payload] : state,
  todoLastAddedAt: (state, { type, payload }) => (type === ADD_TODO) ? Date.now() : state
})
reducer({}, { type: ADD_TODO, payload: { label: 'Sleep' } })
// { todos: [{ label: 'Sleep' }], todoLastAddedAt: /* previous line execution timestamp */ }

Selectors

combineSelectors

const selector = combineSelectors({
  lastTodo: state => state.todos[state.todos.length - 1],
  lastUpdate: state => state.todoLastAddedAt
})
selector({ todos: [{ label: 'Rock' }, { label: 'Roll' }], todoLastAddedAt: 123456789 })
// { lastTodo: { label: 'Roll' }, lastUpdate: 123456789 }

Sagas

takeOne

takeOne(channelOrPattern, effect) is an effect helper similar to takeAll or takeEvery. It takes just the first matching message.

composeSagas

composeSagas(...sagas) composes sagas into a single saga that runs the inner sagas independently.

Ducks

composeDucks

composeDucks(...ducks) composes the reducers and sagas in the supplied ducks into a single { reducer, saga } (possibly to be composed with other ducks all the way to the top, where the composed reducer and saga should be registered with the redux and redux-saga engines).

Modularity Sugar

createDuckFactory

createDuckFactory (or ducks) provides a set of "namespaced" creators of the other state management constructs. See the example in the Modular Ducks (Generics) section.

const {
  // verbose API
  defineType,
  defineAsyncType,
  createAction,
  createReducer,
  createSelector,
  createNestedFactory,
  createDuck,
  collectAndComposeCreatedDucks,
  
  // terse API
  type,
  asyncType,
  action,
  reducer,
  selector,
  nest,
  duck,
  collect
} = createDuckFactory('some.path')
defineType('ADD') // or type('ADD') -> 'some.path.ADD'
defineAsyncType('SAVE') // or asyncType('SAVE') -> { PENDING: 'some.path.SAVE', SUCCESS: ..., FAILURE: ... }
createAction(ADD, createPayload, createMeta) // or action(...) -> message creator function
createReducer(reduce) // or reducer(...) -> `reduce` is passed just the bit of state at `some.path`
createSelector(select) // or selector(...) -> `select` is passed just the bit of state at `some.path`
createNestedFactory('sub.path') // or nest(...) -> createDuckFactory('some.path.sub.path')
createDuck(genericDuck) // or duck(...) -> feeds itself to generic duck (function that expects a duck factory argument)

collectAndComposeCreatedDucks (or collect) composes all ducks created by this factory using createDuck (or duck) and its children created with createNestedFactory (or nest), transitively.

Generics

Reducers

asyncActionReducer & friends

Following utils help store info about async actions. Assuming const LOAD_USERS = defineAsyncType('LOAD_USERS'):

• asyncActionFlagReducer stores a flag indicating whether an async action is currently pending,

  const reducer = asyncActionFlagReducer(LOAD_USERS)
  reducer(undefined, { type: 'INIT' }) // -> false
  reducer(anyState, { type: LOAD_USERS.PENDING }) // -> true
  reducer(anyState, { type: LOAD_USERS.SUCCESS }) // -> false
  reducer(anyState, { type: LOAD_USERS.FAILURE }) // -> false

• asyncActionStatusReducer stores not just the status, but also the last error (failure payload),

  const reducer = asyncActionStatusReducer(LOAD_USERS)
  reducer(undefined, { type: 'INIT' }) // -> { isPending: false, error: undefined }
  reducer(anyState, { type: LOAD_USERS.PENDING }) // -> { isPending: true, error: undefined }
  reducer(anyState, { type: LOAD_USERS.SUCCESS }) // -> { isPending: false, error: undefined }
  reducer(anyState, { type: LOAD_USERS.FAILURE, payload }) // -> { isPending: false, error: payload }

• asyncActionReducer stores status, last error, and last result (success payload),

  const reducer = asyncActionReducer(LOAD_USERS, undefined, [])
  reducer(undefined, { type: 'INIT' }) // -> { isPending: false, error: undefined, result: [] }
  reducer({ result, error, ... }, { type: LOAD_USERS.PENDING }) // -> { isPending: true, error, result }
  reducer(anyState, { type: LOAD_USERS.SUCCESS, payload }) // -> { isPending: false, error: undefined, result: payload }
  reducer({ result, ... }, { type: LOAD_USERS.FAILURE, payload }) // -> { isPending: false, error: payload, result }

• splitAsyncActionReducer does the above but separately for multiple keys (when there's a single action used for handling multiple entities).

  const reducer = splitAsyncActionReducer(LOAD_USERS, ({ meta: { search } }) => search)
  reducer(undefined, { type: 'INIT' }) // -> {}
  reducer({ a, ab, abc: { result, error, ... } }, { type: LOAD_USERS.PENDING, meta: { search: 'abc' } })
  // -> { a, ab, abc: { isPending: false, error, result } }
  reducer({ a, ab, abc }, { type: LOAD_USERS.SUCCESS, payload, meta: { search: 'abc' } })
  // -> { a, ab, abc: { isPending: false, error: undefined, result: payload } }
  reducer({ a, ab, abc: { result, ... } }, { type: LOAD_USERS.FAILURE, payload, meta: { search: 'abc' } })
  // -> { a, ab, abc: { isPending: false, error: payload, result } }

flagReducer

flagReducer manages a boolean flag derived from lists of "true", "false", and "toggle" types.

const reducer = flagReducer([ENTER, SHOW], [HIDE, LEAVE], [TOGGLE])
reducer(undefined, { type: 'INIT' }) // -> false
reducer(anyState, { type: SHOW }) // -> true
reducer(anyState, { type: HIDE }) // -> false
reducer(false, { type: TOGGLE }) // -> true
reducer(true, { type: TOGGLE }) // -> false

const reducer = flagReducer([ENTER, SHOW], [HIDE, LEAVE], [TOGGLE], true)
reducer(undefined, { type: 'INIT' }) // -> true
// … the rest works just the same

singleActionReducer

singleActionReducer collects data from just a single specific action (or rather message type). Assuming const JUMP = defineType('JUMP'):

const reducer = singleActionReducer(JUMP)
reducer(undefined, { type: 'INIT' }) // -> undefined
reducer(undefined, { type: JUMP, payload }) // -> payload

const reducer = singleActionReducer(JUMP, (state, { payload: { distance } }) => Math.max(state, distance), 0)
reducer(undefined, { type: 'INIT' }) // -> 0
reducer(0, { type: JUMP, payload: { height: 120, distance: 180 } }) // -> 180
reducer(180, { type: JUMP, payload: { height: 134, distance: 161 } }) // -> 180

Sagas

asyncActionSaga

asyncActionSaga runs an "async action", emitting appropriate messages along the way.

const ENTER = defineType('ENTER')
const LOAD_USERS = defineAsyncType('LOAD_USERS')
const saga = function* () {
  yield takeLatest(ENTER, asyncActionSaga(LOAD_USERS, effect))
}
const trigger = { type: ENTER, ... }

Running this saga makes it:

1. emit { type: LOAD_USERS.PENDING, meta: { trigger } }, then
2. call const result = effect(trigger.payload, state, trigger) and wait for it to complete or fail, then
3. emit { type: LOAD_USERS.SUCCESS, payload: result, meta: { trigger } } on success or { type: LOAD_USERS.FAILURE, payload: capturedError, meta: { trigger } } on failure.

Note that all of the messages contain the message that triggered them in meta.trigger by default. This can be modified/extended by passing getMeta in the third options argument.

sideEffectsMapSaga

sideEffectsMapSaga simplifies invocation of no-return side-effects, e.g. logging, notifications, or auto-persistence.

const saga = sideEffectsMapSaga({
  [ENTER]: () => alert('Welcome!'),
  [LOAD_USERS.FAILURE]: error => alert(`Loading users failed! (${error})`),
  [LOAD_USERS.SUCCESS]: (payload, { meta: { page, totalPages } }) => (page < totalPages - 1)
    && alert('Not all of the users were loaded. Scroll to bottom to load more.'),
  [LOAD_USERS.FAILURE]: (error, action, state) => alert(`Failed to load${getUsers(state).length ? ' more' : ''} users`)
})

Running this saga makes it fire off the provided side-effects when their respective triggers are observed.

Ducks

asyncActionDuck & friends

asyncActionDuck creates a state manager for an async action.

const ENTER = defineType('ENTER')
const {
  TYPE: LOAD_USERS,
  getResult: getUsers,
  getStatus: getLoadUsersStatus
} = duck(asyncActionDuck(ENTER, ::api.fetchUsers))

• It defines an async TYPE,
• uses asyncActionSaga with takeLatest to call effect, emit the appropriate messages whenever the trigger is observed, and discard obsolete results when encountering another trigger while the effect is in progress,
• uses asyncActionReducer to store status and results and defines selectors for each.

asyncActionDuckWithTrigger provides an additional sugar for those (quite common) cases where trigger is defined/used exclusively to trigger this async action. That's likely not the case with ENTER above (user entering a page is a nice thing to know globally).

const {
  TRIGGER_TYPE: SUBMIT_USER,
  action: submitUser,
  EFFECT_TYPE: SAVE_USER,
  getResult: getSaveUserResult,
  getStatus: getSaveUserStatus
} = duck(asyncActionDuckWithTrigger(::api.fetchUsers))

splitAsyncActionDuck helps with the cases where a single async action is used to perform effects for multiple separate entities. It stores (and obsoletes) data on per-entity basis.

const getKey = ({ payload: user }) => user.id
const {
  TYPE: LOAD_USER_COMMENTS,
  getResults: getAllComments, // -> { firstUserId: firstUserComments, ... }
  getStatuses: getAllLoadCommentsStatuses, // -> { firstUserId: { isPending: Boolean, error: * }, ... }
  getResult: getComments, // -> (userId) => commentsForThatUser: *
  getStatus: getLoadCommentsStatus // -> (userId) => statusForThatUser: { isPending: Boolean, error: * }
} = duck(splitAsyncActionDuck(LOAD_USER.SUCCESS, getKey, ::api.fetchComments))

splitAsyncActionDuckWithTrigger provides an extension just like asyncActionDuckWithTrigger above.

const getKey = ({ payload: user }) => user.id
const {
  TRIGGER_TYPE: EXPAND_USER,
  action: expandUser,
  EFFECT_TYPE: LOAD_USER_COMMENTS,
  // ... `getResults`, `getStatuses`, `getResult`, and `getStatus` same as above
} = duck(splitAsyncActionDuck(LOAD_USER.SUCCESS, getKey, ::api.fetchComments))

confirmDuck

confirmDuck helps with adding a confirmation layer over an existing action.

const { action: doUpdateUser } = duck(asyncActionDuckWithTrigger(::api.saveUser))
const {
  TRIGGER: UPDATE_USER,
  trigger: updateUser,
  CONFIRM: CONFIRM_USER_UPDATE,
  confirm: confirmUserUpdate,
  CANCEL: CANCEL_USER_UPDATE,
  cancel: cancelUserUpdate,
  isPending: isUserUpdateConfirmationPending,
  getTriggerPayload: getUserUpdateData // useful to e.g. show the user's name in the confirmation dialog
} = duck(confirmDuck(doUpdateUser))

Shape of trigger and confirm payloads can be adjusted by passing additional arguments to confirmDuck.

flagDuck

flagDuck helps manage a simple boolean flag.

const {
  TURN_ON_TYPE: SHOW_EDITOR,
  turnOn: showEditor,
  TURN_OFF_TYPE: HIDE_EDITOR,
  turnOff: hideEditor,
  TOGGLE_TYPE: TOGGLE_EDITOR,
  toggle: toggleEditor,
  selector: getIsEditorVisible
} = duck(flagDuck())

formDuck

formDuck manages form state from the initial load, through changes, to the eventual submit (possibly with multiple load triggers, living through multiple submits, etc.).

More details TBD…

formValidationDuck is a decorator for adding async validation to formDuck.

More details TBD…

getSetDuck

getSetDuck helps deal with those simple cases where an action simply maps to stored state.

const {
  TYPE: SET_SEARCH,
  action: setSearch,
  selector: getSearch
} = duck(getSetDuck(''))

persistenceDuck

persistenceDuck is a state manager decorator that initializes the state from external storage and then saves subsequent state updates to the same.

const storage = {
  get: key => JSON.parse(localStorage.getItem(key) ?? 'null') ?? undefined,
  set: (key, value) => (value === undefined) ? localStorage.removeItem(key) : localStorage.setItem(key, JSON.stringify(value))
}
const pageSize = nest('pageSize')
const { TYPE: SET_PAGE_SIZE } = pageSize.duck(getSetDuck(25)) // use default size of 25…
pageSize.duck(persistenceDuck(storage, SET_PAGE_SIZE)) // …but only if there's none already persisted

reduceAndSelectDuck

reduceAndSelectDuck helps store and access state (at the place in state tree where it is applied, implicitly).

const { selector: getMaxObservedPrice } = duck(
  reduceAndSelectDuck(
    singleActionReducer(
      LOAD_PRODUCTS.SUCCESS,
      (prevMaxPrice, { payload: products }) => Math.max(prevMaxPrice, ...products.map(({ price }) => price)),
      0
    )
  )
)

Development

Install

Install dependencies using:

npm install

Develop

After you modify sources, run the following (or set up your IDE to do it for you):

• format the code using npm run format
• lint it using npm run lint
• test it using npm test

and fix the errors, if there are any.

Publish

Publishing is done in two steps:

1. Create a new version tag and push it to the repository:

   npm version <patch|minor|major>
   git push --follow-tags

2. Build and publish the new version as a npm package:

   npm publish --access public