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Cover image for React hooks: useReducer
Abdullah Furkan Özbek
Abdullah Furkan Özbek

Posted on • Updated on

React hooks: useReducer

1. Definition

useReducer is usually preferable to useState when you have complex state logic that involves multiple sub-values or when the next state depends on the previous one.

It accepts a reducer of type (state, action) => newState, and returns the current state paired with a dispatch method. (If you’re familiar with Redux, you already know how this works.

Here is the countReducer example;

const initialState = { count: 0 }

const counterReducer = (state, action) => {
  switch (action.type) {
    case 'increment':
      return {count: state.count + 1};
    case 'decrement':
      return {count: state.count - 1};
    default:
      throw new Error();
  }
}
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2. Specifying the initial State

There are two ways to initialized the useReducer state;

2.1. Basic

We can just give it as a second argument to useReducer call;

const [state, dispatch] = useReducer(
  countReducer,
  { count: 0 } // second argument
);
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2.2. Lazy Initialization

We can also initialize it lazily by giving it as a third parameter as a function;

const initState = (defaultCount) => ({ count: defaultCount })

const Counter = ({ counter }) => {
    const [state, dispatch] = useReducer(
      countReducer,
      counter, // second argument
        initState // third argument
    );

    // Rest of the component...
}
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3. Usage

After we initialize it we just need to call dispatch functions that we are getting from useReducer hook and use it as a handler inside our elements.

React guarantees that dispatch function identity is stable and won’t change on re-renders.

const Counter = ({ counter }) => {
    const [state, dispatch] = useReducer(countReducer, 0);

    return (
    <>
      Count: {state.count}
      <button onClick={() => dispatch({type: 'decrement'})}>-</button>
      <button onClick={() => dispatch({type: 'increment'})}>+</button>
    </>
  );
}
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4. Links

Top comments (1)

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scriptkavi profile image
ScriptKavi

Many early birds have already started using this custom hooks library
in their ReactJs/NextJs project.

Have you started using it?

scriptkavi/hooks

PS: Don't be a late bloomer :P