When does it make sense to use a reducer vs a simple state value with React’s Hooks? There’s no hard-and-fast rule, but the React team suggests useReducer
when “managing state objects that contains multiple sub-values”
That described my use case well. I had a series of steps, each one with multiple sub values, and depending on what the user did, the step(s) would be affected in a variety of ways (to start with - only two, but the number of interactions may grow in the future).
Before jumping into the useReducer
, a few thoughts:
- I could have stored the entire object in a single
useState
and then managed the updates manually. For example, from the docs:1
setState(prevState => { // Object.assign would also work return {…prevState, …updatedValues}; })
- I may have benefitted from using React’s Context API to avoid some of the prop-drilling and passing around that occurred later on. I opted to not use it in this case, however, because the reducer was used immediately in the child components (i.e. I would not benefit from avoiding prop drilling).
Getting Started - Adding the UseReducer
To actually use this hook, I needed to invoke it within a component. A simplified look at how that was done:
interface Step {
id: string;
hidden?: boolean;
status?: StepStatusTypes;
}
const MyComponent = () => {
/* ... */
const initialArg: Step[] = [...]
const [steps, stepsDispatch] = useReducer(stepsReducer, initialArg);
/* ... */
return (
/* ... */
<MyChildComponent stepsDispatch={stepsDispatch} />
/* ... */
)
}
Defining The Reducer
Defining the reducer, the first argument for useReducer
was actually the trickiest part. Not because reducers themselves are actually that complicated, but because of Typescript.
For example, here’s the basic reducer that I came up with:
function stepsReducer(steps, action) {
switch (action.type) {
case 'SHOW-ALL':
return steps.map(step => ({ ...step, hidden: action.payload }))
case 'SET-STATUS':
steps.splice(action.payload.index, 1, {
...steps[action.payload.index],
status: action.payload.status,
})
return steps
default:
return steps
}
}
If it received a SHOW-ALL
action, each step would take the value of the payload and apply it to the hidden
attribute. On the other hand, if it received the SET-STATUS
action, only that step would have its status updated. In all other cases, the steps object was simply returned.
In this project, Typescript is configured to yell if anything has a type of any
- implicitly or otherwise. As a result, I needed to type the Actions. And, given the different shape of the actions, this proved to be the most challenging part of the entire exercise.
My first approach
interface Action {
type: string
payload: boolean | { index: number; status: string }
}
I thought this was going to work the compiler started yelling that index
doesn’t exist on type false
. Sure, that makes sense - except that I was trying to say it’d be a boolean value or an object with an index
property.
Oh well.
So, I started digging for examples of folks using redux
with typescript
. (While I was using a hook, since they’re still relatively new and the principles are the same, I figured whatever I found, I’d be able to apply.)
I found this thread on how to type Redux actions and Redux reducers in TypeScript? on Stack Overflow helpful and got me going in the right direction.
The first attempt I made was splitting up the types like the first answer suggests:
interface ShowAllAction {
type: string
payload: boolean
}
interface Action {
type: string
payload: { index: number; status: string }
}
type Action = ShowAllAction | SetStatusAction
Same story. Typescript yelled because index
didn’t exist on type false
. This wasn’t the answer.
Then, I found an answer which used Type Guards.2 Type Guards have always made more sense to me than Generics. A Type Guard is a function that allows Typescript to determine which type is being used while a Generic is a type that receives another to define it (actually Dispatch
is a Generic if I’m not mistaken).
Effectively, before I used an action, I needed to determine which type of action I’d be using. Enter Type Guards:
export interface Action {
type: string
}
export interface ShowAllAction extends Action {
payload: boolean
}
export interface SetStatusAction extends Action {
payload: {
index: number
status: string
}
}
// The Type Guard Functions
function isShowAllAction(action: Action): action is ShowAllAction {
return action.type === 'SHOW-ALL'
}
function isSetStatusAction(action: Action): action is SetStatusAction {
return action.type === 'SET-STATUS'
}
function stepsReducer(steps: IFormStep[], action: Action) {
if (isShowAllAction(action)) {
return steps.map((step: IFormStep) => ({
...step,
disabled: action.payload,
hidden: action.payload,
}))
}
if (isSetStatusAction(action)) {
steps.splice(action.payload.index, 1, {
...steps[action.payload.index],
status: action.payload.status,
})
return steps
}
return steps
}
With the type guards in place, I was ready to actually start dispatching actions.
Invoking (And Typing) The Dispatch Function
If I had only ever tried to dispatch actions from within the component in which the useReducer
was defined, Typescript probably would have been able to tell what was happening. However, I wanted different parts of my app to be able to dispatch actions and not have to repeat logic. That was why I wanted a shared state in the first place.
That meant I needed to pass the dispatch function around and define it as part of the other component’s interfaces.
So, how do you type a dispatch so that Typescript doesn’t yell? It turns out React exports a Dispatch
type which takes an Action
(note, however, that the Action
is the one defined by you).
Use React’s Dispatch
like so:
import React, { Dispatch } from "react";
import { Action, ShowAllAction } from "../index";
const MyChildComponent = ({stepsDispatch: Dispatch<Action & ShowAllAction>}) => {
/* ... */
}
Conclusion
Using useReducer
with Typescript is not that challenging once the basics are understood. The hardest part about the entire process was getting the typing right, and Type Guards proved to be up to the challenge!
I’m excited to keep exploring other ways to use reducers and dispatch actions.
Maybe my next step will be to explore Action Factories so I don’t have to keep creating these objects!
Footnotes
-
1 While
useState
predominately is updated declaratively. It can use the old syntax of usingprevState
in a functional update: Hooks API Reference – React. - 2 I’d read the typescript documentation on Type Guards several times in the past without it clicking. As with so many topics, things fell in place once I had a reason to be there.
Top comments (5)
You may want to look into discriminated unions : typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/a...
The syntax is, I think, somewhat clunky, but the idea is that you start out with an enum with your action types:
Then the actual discriminated union with whatever data each action type needs:
In your reducer you can now switch on kind:
It is fairly elegant, although perhaps a bit convoluted, but you have the compiler help you out quite bit :)
Very nice! Thank you!
It's an old post but I guess it's never too late to say thank you.
Thank you for your post! It set me on a right track to solve my issue.
I also need to include generics so let me add a SO post, in case somebody needs that too:
stackoverflow.com/questions/553964...
Thank you so f***ing much for this! Pretty much nailed my exact problem, as well as my approach to solving it so I feel a lot better.
I also have been reading a lot of Redux/Typescript docs b/c I am experienced w/ Redux, but am using the Context API w/ Graphql in a NextJS project...
First major attempt at a TS project, love the tooling with VSCode, but it's a lot of extra work up front (though I can see how it pays off just in how forward it makes you think...)
Great stuff. Thanks again.
So happy to hear it was helpful!