Elizabeth Alcalá

Posted on Mar 22, 2020

useReducer TypeScript React Context with useReducer and Typescript.

#typescript #react #context #reducers

There are many options to handle state in react applications. Obviously you can use setState for some small logic, but what if you have a complex state to manage?

Maybe you will use Redux or MobX to handle this scenario, but there is also the option to use React Context, and you don't have to install another dependency.

Let's see how we can manage a complex state, with the Context API and Typescript.

In this tutorial we are building, a product list with a shopping cart counter.

First, create a new React project with create-react-app.

npx create-react-app my-app --template typescript
cd my-app/

Next, create a new context.tsx file inside the src directory.

/*context.tsx*/

import React, { createContext } from 'react';

const AppContext = createContext({});

You can initialize a context api as simple as that, with any value you want, in this case, I'm using an empty object.

Now let's create an initial state, with an empty list of products and the shopping cart counter to zero. Also, let's add some types for this.

/*context.tsx*/

import React, { createContext } from 'react';

type ProductType = {
  id: number;
  name: string;
  price: number;
}

type InitialStateType = {
  products: ProductType[];
  shoppingCart: number;
}

const initialState = {
  products: [],
  shoppingCart: 0,
}

const AppContext = createContext<InitialStateType>(initialState);

Every product inside the product list is going to have an id, name, and price.

Now we will use reducers and actions to create and delete a product, and also increase the shopping cart counter by one. First, create a new file called reducers.ts.

/*reducers.ts*/

export const productReducer = (state, action) => {
  switch (action.type) {
    case 'CREATE_PRODUCT':
      return [
        ...state,
        {
          id: action.payload.id,
          name: action.payload.name,
          price: action.payload.price,
        }
      ]
    case 'DELETE_PRODUCT':
      return [
        ...state.filter(product => product.id !== action.payload.id),
      ]
    default:
      return state;
  }
}

export const shoppingCartReducer = (state, action) => {
  switch (action.type) {
    case 'ADD_PRODUCT':
      return state + 1;
  }
}

A reducer function receives two arguments, the first one is the state, that we are passing when using useReducer hook, and the second one is an object that represents that events and some data that will change the state (action).

In this case, we create two reducers, one is for the products, and the other one for the shopping cart. On the product reducer, we add two actions, one for creating a new product and the other one to delete any product. For the shopping cart reducer, the only action we add is to increase the counter every time you add a new product.

As you can see, for creating a product we pass, the id, the name, and the price, and return our current state, with the new object. For deleting one, we just need and id and the return is the state but without the product that has this id.

Now let's change the context file to import these reducer functions.

/*context.tsx*/

import React, { createContext, useReducer } from 'react';
import { productReducer, shoppingCartReducer } from './reducers';

type ProductType = {
  id: number;
  name: string;
  price: number;
}

type InitialStateType = {
  products: ProductType[];
  shoppingCart: number;
}

const intialState = {
  products: [],
  shoppingCart: 0,
}

const AppContext = createContext<{
  state: InitialStateType;
  dispatch: React.Dispatch<any>;
}>({
  state: initialState,
  dispatch: () => null
});

const mainReducer = ({ products, shoppingCart }, action) => ({
  products: productReducer(products, action),
  shoppingCart: shoppingCartReducer(shoppingCart, action),
});

const AppProvider: React.FC = ({ children }) => {
  const [state, dispatch] = useReducer(mainReducer, initialState);

  return (
    <AppContext.Provider value={{state, dispatch}}>
      {children}
    </AppContext.Provider>
  )
}

export { AppContext, AppProvider };

There's is a mainReducer function, that combines the two reducers that we are going to have (product reducer and shopping cart reducer), each one manages a select part of the state.

Also, we create the AppProvider component, and inside this, the useReducer hook takes this mainReducer and the initial state to return the state and the dispatch.

We pass these values into the AppContext.Provider, doing this we can access the state and dispatch with the useContext hook.

Next, add these types for the reducers and actions.

/*reducers.ts*/

type ActionMap<M extends { [index: string]: any }> = {
  [Key in keyof M]: M[Key] extends undefined
    ? {
        type: Key;
      }
    : {
        type: Key;
        payload: M[Key];
      }
};

export enum Types {
  Create = 'CREATE_PRODUCT',
  Delete = 'DELETE_PRODUCT',
  Add = 'ADD_PRODUCT',
}

// Product

type ProductType = {
  id: number;
  name: string;
  price: number;
}

type ProductPayload = {
  [Types.Create] : {
    id: number;
    name: string;
    price: number;
  };
  [Types.Delete]: {
    id: number;
  }
}

export type ProductActions = ActionMap<ProductPayload>[keyof ActionMap<ProductPayload>];

export const productReducer = (state: ProductType[], action: ProductActions | ShoppingCartActions) => {
  switch (action.type) {
    case Types.Create:
      return [
        ...state,
        {
          id: action.payload.id,
          name: action.payload.name,
          price: action.payload.price,
        }
      ]
    case Types.Delete:
      return [
        ...state.filter(product => product.id !== action.payload.id),
      ]
    default:
      return state;
  }
}

// ShoppingCart

type ShoppingCartPayload = {
  [Types.Add]: undefined;
}

export type ShoppingCartActions = ActionMap<ShoppingCartPayload>[keyof ActionMap<ShoppingCartPayload>];

export const shoppingCartReducer = (state: number, action: ProductActions | ShoppingCartActions) => {
  switch (action.type) {
    case Types.Add:
      return state + 1;
    default:
      return state;
  }
}

I take this approach from this post, basically we are checking wich action.type is used, and according to that, we generate the types for the payload.

NOTE

Another approach you can take is to use Discriminated unions like this.

type Action =
 | { type: 'ADD' }
 | { type: 'CREATE', create: object }
 | { type: 'DELETE', id: string };

In the previous code, all of those types have a common property called type. Typescript will create type guards for discriminated unions and will let us now according to the type we are using wich other properties the object type has.

But for this tutorial we are using two common properties for our actions type and payload, and the payload object type changes according to the type, so discriminated union types won't work.

Now, let's import the types we define into the context file.

/*context.tsx*/

import React, { createContext, useReducer, Dispatch } from 'react';
import { productReducer, shoppingCartReducer, ProductActions, ShoppingCartActions } from './reducers';

type ProductType = {
  id: number;
  name: string;
  price: number;
}

type InitialStateType = {
  products: ProductType[];
  shoppingCart: number;
}

const initialState = {
  products: [],
  shoppingCart: 0,
}

const AppContext = createContext<{
  state: InitialStateType;
  dispatch: Dispatch<ProductActions | ShoppingCartActions>;
}>({
  state: initialState,
  dispatch: () => null
});

const mainReducer = ({ products, shoppingCart }: InitialStateType, action: ProductActions | ShoppingCartActions) => ({
  products: productReducer(products, action),
  shoppingCart: shoppingCartReducer(shoppingCart, action),
});


const AppProvider: React.FC = ({ children }) => {
  const [state, dispatch] = useReducer(mainReducer, initialState);

  return (
    <AppContext.Provider value={{state, dispatch}}>
      {children}
    </AppContext.Provider>
  )
}

export { AppProvider, AppContext };

Don't forget to wrap your main component with the AppProvider.

/* App.tsx */

import React from 'react';
import { AppProvider } from './context';
import Products from './products';

const App = () => {
  <AppProvider>
    // your stuff
    <Products />
  </AppProvider>
}

export default App

Create a Products component and inside this add the following code.

/* Products.tsx */

import React, { useContext } from 'react';
import { AppContext } from './context';
import { Types } from './reducers';

const Products = () => {
  const { state, dispatch } = useContex(AppContext);

  return (
    <div>
      <button onClick={() => {
        dispatch({
          type: Types.Add,
        })
      }}>
        click
        </button>
      {state.shoppingCart}
    </div>
  )
}

export default Products;

Everything it's strongly typed now.

You can check the code here.

Sources.

https://medium.com/hackernoon/finally-the-typescript-redux-hooks-events-blog-you-were-looking-for-c4663d823b01

Top comments (29)

Deven Phillips • Nov 2 '20

Finally! A Context/Reducer tutorial which uses typescript and DOESNT just show how to change the theme name... Any chance you would be willing to add a custom Dispatcher which could resolve promises from REST API Calls? All of our API calls return Promises, and the dispatch method in React cannot resolve Promises, so I would love to see an example of a "Dispatcher" which wraps the default dispatch function to handle resolving Promises!

Daniel Kaschel • Jan 1 '22

It's not a best practice to include your API calls in your reducer. The purpose of your reducer is to accept incoming state changes and apply them to the context.

Instead, when an action occurs in a .tsx component, write code like this:

apiCallFunction(args).then(result => dispatch(Actions.ThisAction, result))

This will cause the context to be updated when the api call finishes, and then your reducer can apply the results, update the context, and React will handle updating the DOM.

Man Nguyen • Apr 25 '20

Greate post! although I have a question the way you have the type right now with the actions being a Discriminated unions of all the actions that created by ActionMap of all the reducers. This is very hard to manage when you have alot of reducers. There is no separation of concern. How would I go about moving each reducer into its own files. Then would I import each and every actions from all the reducer so I can use discriminated unions? I think there should be a better way, but I'm not knowledgable to do that yet. Do you have any suggestion?

Elizabeth Alcalá • Apr 25 '20

Thanks! Yes I know if you have more than three reducers the types for the main reducer can increase, and be hard to manage.
I don't know how to improve the action type, this action has to be a union of product and shoppingCart actions because when using dispatch you can use either of both actions. To know exactly what action I need to use, maybe you could try with generics and conditional types. I think you could pass a generic type through Context to enable just certain types for actions and state. It's an idea, maybe works. I'll try to implement it.

Man Nguyen • Apr 25 '20

So I found this on a stack overflow post

function combineReducers(reducers) {
    return (state = {}, action) => {
        const newState = {};
        for (let key in reducers) {
            newState[key] = reducers[key](state[key], action);
        }
        return newState;
    };
}

all you have to do is pass an object with key and value is the reducer. I'm searching about generic to convert this function to be type-safe. But if you have any idea please share. Thank you!

Man Nguyen • May 6 '20

As it turned out your way of doing the combine reducers also works for type-safe all you gotta do is use type assertion ie:

const mainReducer = ({ products, shoppingCart }: InitialStateType, action: ProductActions | ShoppingCartActions) => ({
  products: productReducer(products, action as ProductActions),
  shoppingCart: shoppingCartReducer(shoppingCart, action as ShoppingCartActions),
});

By using the 'as' keyword there you can now get rid of the unions type on the action arg of your reducers

Elizabeth Alcalá • May 6 '20

Hey, you are right, type assertion works well in this case, it makes the code look cleaner without the union types.

Thanks a lot.

reymart • May 19 '20

Finally, I've found the exact thing that I was looking for. However, I still have a question. Can you show me how to initialize state from child nodes using this approach. What I wanted to achieve is something that is similar on this:
const [state, dispatch] = useReducer(
SampleReducer,
initialState,
() => {
return { field1: sampleValue1, field2: sampleValue2}
}
)

Thank you in advance.

Elizabeth Alcalá • May 20 '20

Hey, I'm glad this helps you, according to react docs you can initialize a state passing a third argument. reactjs.org/docs/hooks-reference.h....

reymart • May 21 '20

Yup, it same as what I also mentioned above. But, how would you achieve it in a context since the reducer is already part of the context?

Elizabeth Alcalá • May 22 '20

oh. maybe you can pass the function through the context to the reducer? I'm going to try it and if I'm able to do it, I'll share the code :)

reymart • May 22 '20

Yup, looking forward to it. That is what I wanted to achieve, I saw also in hooks document that we can create an init function that can be call through dispatch, however, not yet tried it.

Man Nguyen • May 7 '20

Hi do you know how do I apply middleware with this config? I have been looking into this and i only got as far as create a single middleware and apply it but can't find how to apply multiple middleware

Elizabeth Alcalá • May 7 '20

I haven't tried to apply multiple middlewares, let me try, and if I found a way I'll let you know.

Ela Kaczmarek • Jan 31 '23

Amazing tutorial that helper in my current project!
I have one question: Is it possible to add new type in the same reducer ->Types.Get? It would be returning one product by incoming id. The input would be like in Types.Delete action.payload.id. It could be required to extend reducers operation in order to show the user one product.

Probably change of state would be required but I may be wrong:
const initialState = {
products: [],
selectedProduct: -1,
shoppingCart: 0,
}

imadev • Oct 29 '22

Very good article, help me a lot. Just to add some salt, I do prefer to manage my reducers indexing an object instead of the traditional function with switch. Example below:

const handlers: Handlers = {
  LOGIN: (state, action) => {
    const { email, password } = action.payload!

    return {
      ...state,
      isAuthenticated: true,
      user: { email, password },
    }
  },
  LOGOUT: (state) => ({
    ...state,
    isAuthenticated: false,
    user: null,
  }),
  REGISTER: (state, action) => {
    const user = action.payload!

    return {
      ...state,
      isAuthenticated: true,
      user,
    }
  },
}


export const initialState: AuthContextType = {
  isAuthenticated: false,
  user: { name: '', email: '', password: '' },
}

type Handlers = {
  [key: string]: (
    state: AuthContextType,
    action: AuthActions,
  ) => AuthContextType
}

const authReducer = (state: AuthContextType, action: AuthActions) =>
  handlers[action.type] ? handlers[action.type](state, action) : state

export { authReducer }