React Redux Toolkit to manage state in a React Application

Redux Toolkit is a popular package for managing state in React applications that provides a set of utilities to simplify the process of creating and managing Redux stores.

Here are the steps I used to integrate the React Redux Toolkit in my React application

Install Redux Toolkit

npm install @reduxjs/toolkit

Use createSlice method from @reduxjs/toolkit to generate reducers:

import { createSlice } from '@reduxjs/toolkit'; 
const counterSlice = createSlice({
 name: 'counter',
 initialState: { value: 0, },
 reducers: {
 increment: state => { state.value += 1; },
 decrement: state => { state.value -= 1; },
   },
}); 
export const { increment, decrement } = counterSlice.actions; 
export default counterSlice.reducer;

Create a Redux store using configureStore method from @reduxjs/toolkit:

import { configureStore } from '@reduxjs/toolkit'; 
import counterReducer from './counterSlice'; 
const store = configureStore({
 reducer: { counter: counterReducer, },
 }); 
export default store;

Connect your Components to the Redux Store

import { useSelector, useDispatch } from 'react-redux'; 
import { increment, decrement } from './counterSlice'; 
function Counter() {
 const count = useSelector(state => state.counter.value);
 const dispatch = useDispatch();
  return (
 <div>
 <button onClick={() => dispatch(increment())}>+</button>
<span>{count}</span> 
<button onClick={() => dispatch(decrement())}>-</button> 
</div>
    );
 }
 export default Counter;

And that’s it! With these steps, I was able to use the React Redux Toolkit to manage state in my React application.

If you are not familiar with Redux it could induce a steep learning curve as you have to learn its basic concepts such as actions, reducers, and stores from scratch. But otherwise integrating React Redux Toolkit itself is a straightforward process.

I did face some challenges as my application grew but then I also found ways to resolve them. Here are some of my experiences…

Managing Complex State

In the older Redux approach, the state management became more complex and challenging to manage as the application grew in size, and you had to spend considerable time restructuring the state and updating the reducers to handle the added complexity. However, with the React Redux Toolkit, you can avoid the complex boilerplate code and streamline the process of state management. The createSlice function provided by the React Redux Toolkit reduces the need for boilerplate code and simplifies the process of state management. Additionally, it eliminates the need for manually writing multiple reducers and combining them, making it easier to manage the state and improving the performance of the application.

One of the key features of Redux Toolkit is that it allows you to write “mutating” logic in reducers. This does not actually mutate the state because it uses the Immer library, which detects changes to a “draft state” and produces a new immutable state based on those changes. This makes it possible to directly update the state within reducers, which simplifies the code and improves the readability of the application.

const counterSlice = createSlice({
  name: 'counter',
  initialState: {
    value: 0,
  },
  reducers: {
     functionName: (state, action: PayloadAction<number>) => {
       state.value += action.payload
     },
   }
});

Debugging

Debugging Redux code became more challenging with size since there are many moving parts involved, such as actions, reducers, and middleware. It can give us a hard time tracing the flow of data through the application.

Here are some of the ways that made debugging easier for me…

• Writing test cases for the Redux components, actions, and reducers helped me identify bugs early in the development process. I used the Jest testing framework as it comes with built-in support for testing Redux components and provides a rich set of features for writing unit and integration tests.
  
• Redux DevTools is a browser extension that simplified my debugging process by providing a visual representation of the application state and action history.
  
• The “redux-logger” middleware enabled me to log actions and state changes to the console. This helped in tracking down issues fast.
  
• I used the “redux-thunk-error-handler” to handle all errors that occur inside of both sync and async thunks in a centralized place.

Boilerplate Code

Redux Toolkit is a powerful library that simplifies the process of managing state in a React application by providing a set of abstractions that can reduce the amount of boilerplate code. One such abstraction is the createSlice function, which generates the necessary reducer and action creators for a specific slice of the state. However, it’s important to note that while Redux Toolkit can make the process of managing state simpler, there is still some boilerplate code that needs to be written. For example, you’ll still need to write some code to set up the Redux store, combine reducers, and dispatch actions. By leveraging the abstractions provided by Redux Toolkit and writing only the necessary boilerplate code, you can create a scalable and maintainable React application with Redux.

Performance

If not optimized properly, Redux can have a negative impact on the performance of an application. I experienced this first hand and had to spend some time optimizing the state management to ensure that it does not affect my application’s performance.

In my previous Redux applications, I would use mapStateToProps to map state data to the props of a component that displayed a list of objects from a large array. However, this approach proved to be expensive as every state change would trigger Redux to call the mapStateToProps function. With Redux Toolkit, I found a simpler and more efficient way to extract data from the Redux store using useState. Additionally, I have also utilized memoization through useMemo.

Memoization is a programming technique that caches the results of expensive function calls to avoid repetitive and resource-intensive computations for the same input values. When a function is called with a set of arguments, it checks whether it has already computed the result for the same arguments before. If the result is found in the cache, it returns the cached result. Also to optimize the performance further, I used the “reselect” library, which is a memoization library for Redux selectors. “reselect” enabled me to create memoized selectors that only recomputed the derived data when the input selectors changed. This significantly reduced the amount of re-computations that were needed to be done when the state changed.

To address potential issues when using Redux Toolkit, we should take care of the following:

Handling Asynchronous Actions

Asynchronous actions can be a common source of issues when working with Redux Toolkit. To handle asynchronous actions, you can use middleware like Redux Thunk or Redux Saga. Redux Thunk allows you to write action creators that return a function instead of an action object. The function can then dispatch actions asynchronously, and perform asynchronous logic before dispatching the final action. Redux Saga provides a more powerful way to handle asynchronous actions, using a generator function that can listen to dispatched actions and perform async operations.

Optimizing Performance

As your application grows, the performance of your Redux store may become a concern. To optimize performance, you can use the createSelector function from the reselect library. This function allows you to create memoized selectors, which only recompute their output if their input selectors have changed. This can significantly improve the performance of your application, as it reduces the number of unnecessary recomputations.

Debugging

When using Redux Toolkit, it is important to be able to debug your application. You can use the Redux DevTools extension to debug your store and visualize its state changes. The extension also provides a time-traveling debugger, which allows you to go back in time and inspect the state of your store at any point in the past. This can be incredibly helpful when trying to track down bugs or understand how your application is behaving.

Code Organization

As your application grows, it can become difficult to manage your Redux code. To keep your code organized, you can use the createSlice function to create reusable slices of your store. You can also use the createEntityAdapter function to manage normalized data in your store. These functions help to keep your code modular and maintainable, which is essential for building large-scale applications.

Overall, integrating Redux Toolkit with a React application can be a rewarding experience for developers, but it may require some time and effort to get right.