mobx-react-viewmodel

Tiny package (~0.9 KB) which can make a huge difference for your React/Mobx app architecture.

Simple hooks useViewModel and useViewModelFactory allow you to move all component's state and logic from the render function to a separate stateful view-model class. Which unleashes the full power of Mobx and helps you escape React Hooks Hell.

Written in TypeScript and 100% type-safe 🎯

Installation

npm install mobx-react-viewmodel --save

or

yarn add mobx-react-viewmodel

Simple Example

import { observer } from 'mobx-react'
import { useViewModel } from 'mobx-react-viewmodel'

class MyViewModel {
  @observable
  title: string = '';

  constructor() {
    makeObservable(this);
  }

  @action
  setTitle(title: string) {
    this.title = title;
  }
}

const MyComponent = observer(() => {
  const viewModel = useViewModel(MyViewModel); // MyViewModel instance will be created only once on first render 

  return (
    <div>
      <input
        type="text"
        value={viewModel.title}
        onChange={e => viewModel.setTitle(e.target.value)}
        placeholder="Type title..."
      />
      <p>Title: {viewModel.title}</p>
    </div>
  );
});

Benefits

• View-layer (component's render function) stays clean and contains only rendering code
• Taking full advantage of Mobx using @observable / @computed / @action / reaction / when primitives for powerful reactive programming
• No need to use useState / useEffects / useCallback / useMemo anymore (goodbye spaghetti code, stale closure bugs and dependency list for every hook)
• At some point, if you need to move some component's state to a global Mobx-store, you don't have to rewrite old hooks-code with Mobx. You can just cut and paste what you need from view-model class to the store class

Advanced Example

// MyPageViewModel.ts

import { action, comparer, computed, makeObservable, observable, reaction } from 'mobx';
import { User, UsersStore } from 'our/users/module'

interface MyPageViewModelProps {
  userId: string;
}

class MyPageViewModel extends ViewModel<MyPageViewModelProps> {
  @observable
  user?: User;

  constructor(props: MyPageViewModelProps, private usersStore: UsersStore) {
    super(props);
    makeObservable(this);
  }
  // is invoked immediately after a component is mounted 
  init(){
    this.disposers.push(
      reaction(
        () => this.props.userId,
        userId => this.getUserFromStore(userId),
        { fireImmediately: true }
      )
    );
  }
  // is invoked immediately before a component is unmounted and destroyed
  dispose() {
    super.dispose();
    this.user = undefined;
  }

  @action
  updateField = (field: keyof User, value: string) => {
    if (!this.user) return;
    this.user[field] = value;
  }

  @action
  save = () => {
    if (!this.user) return;
    this.usersStore.updateUser(this.user);
  }

  @computed
  isPristine() {
    const storeUser = this.usersStore.getUser(this.props.userId);
    return this.user && storeUser && comparer.shallow(this.user, storeUser);
  }

  @action
  private getUserFromStore = (userId: string) => {
    const user = this.usersStore.getUser(userId);
    if (user) {
      this.user = { ...user };
    } else {
      console.error(`Couldn't find user: ${userId}`);
    }
  }
}

// MyPage.tsx

import { observer } from 'mobx-react'
import { useViewModel } from 'mobx-react-viewmodel'
import { useParams } from 'react-router-dom';
import { useStores } from 'our/stores/path';

const MyPage = observer(() => {
  // Get the userId param from the URL.
  const { userId } = useParams();
  // Get our custom store from hook or context
  const { userStore } = useStores();
  
  const viewModel = useViewModelFactory(
    props => new MyPageViewModel(props, userStore), // Factory-function will be called only once on first render
    { userId } // These `props` are reactive. It will be passed and updated in view-model every time it changes without creating new instance of view-model 
  );
  
  //** or
  // const viewModel = useViewModel(
  //    MyPageViewModel, 
  //   { userId },
  //   [userStore] // Extra dependencies for the view-model constructor
  // );

  return (
    <div>
      <input
        type="text"
        value={viewModel.user.first_name}
        onChange={e => viewModel.updateField('first_name', e.target.value)}
        placeholder="First Name"
      />
      
      <input
        type="text"
        value={viewModel.user.last_name}
        onChange={e => viewModel.updateField('last_name', e.target.value)}
        placeholder="Last Name"
      />
      
      <button type="button" disabled={viewModel.isPristine} onClick={viewModel.save}>Save</button>
    </div>
  );
});

You can find more examples here.

API documentation

useViewModel(ViewModelClass, props?, args?)

Basic hook that creates an instance of the ViewModelClass on the first render and keeps it alive during all further renders. If props is passed, it will be set to the ViewModelClass instance props property every time it changes. If args is passed, it will be passed to the ViewModelClass constructor on the first render. You should use only permanent references to the object there, for example, a reference to singleton objects. If ViewModelClass implements init() or dispose() methods, they will be called on the component's mount and unmount events.

useViewModelFactory(factoryFn, props?)

Hook for more advanced view-model instantiation. It allows to inject extra dependencies to the view-model constructor inside the custom factoryFn. Life-cycle and props update logic is the same as with useViewModel

ViewModel

Base class with observable props property which is automatically updated by useViewModel or useViewModelFactory. Also, it has a built-in disposers array for storing all disposer-functions from reaction, when, or any other custom ones that you need to call on unmount. You can extend your custom view-model classes from this class for cutting down boilerplate code.