Is it a good idea to nest constants in Redux? - redux

In our Product we use Angular 6 together with NgRX 6. Instead of defining our constants as export const strings, we use an object to encapsulate them:
export const ACTION_CONSTANTS = {
'OPEN_MODAL' : 'OPEN_MODAL',
'CLOSE_MODAL' : 'CLOSE_MODAL',
'OPEN_TOOLTIP' : 'OPEN_TOOLTIP',
'CLOSE_TOOLTIP' : 'CLOSE_TOOLTIP',
...
};
As the ACTION_CONSTANTS object gets bigger and prefixes get longer ('DROPDOWN_ACTION_SKIP_SET_INIT_STATE'), I would prefer to nest constants e.g. by feature:
export const ACTION_CONSTANTS = {
'MODAL' : {
'OPEN' : 'MODAL.OPEN',
'CLOSE' : 'MODAL.CLOSE'
},
'TOOLTIP' : {
'OPEN' : 'TOOLTIP.OPEN',
'CLOSE' : 'TOOLTIP.CLOSE'
},
...
};
Is it a good idea or are there any downsides? I could not find anything on formatting constants on the Redux FAQ.

I don't think it is a bad idea, as long as you're able to keep it all organized. But I would suggest grouping your actions into different files. I find this the best way to keep things organized.
--ActionsFile
-modalActions.js
-toolTipAction.js

I usually keep actions in different files, roughly aligned with models & reducers. And i have a naming convention like:
ACTION_MODEL_OUTCOME
So, for example, to load model of type ProductGroup i would have actions:
export const ActionTypes = {
LOAD_PRODUCTGROUP: enforceUnique("[ProductGroup] Laod ProductGroup"),
LOAD_PRODUCTGROUP_SUCCESS: enforceUnique("[ProductGroup] Load ProductGroup Success")
LOAD_PRODUCTGROUP_FAILURE: enforceUnique("[ProductGroup] Load ProductGroup Failure")
}
enforceUnique is a function that caches all registered actions and make sure there are no duplicates across the whole app.
Now, when you import actions for certain model, you import only those from file you need (e.g. import ProductGroupActionTypes from 'actions/ProductGroupActions') and use them like ProductGroupActionTypes.LOAD_PRODUCTGROUP.
Usually, first one (without outcome suffix) is the one to initiate action and set some pending flag in reducer to show loader and also to initiate http calls in #Effects.
Second one, with success suffix is handled in reducer to change state.
Third one is error handling, whatever way you want to do it.

Related

Ngrx Large Amounts of Data causes app to slow down

I have an app that loads some images with metadata. A single folder can be quite large (~100-142Mb) once loaded into memory. Previously, we were using a plain old javascript object to manage the state of the app and everything worked fine, but i'd like to gain the benefits of ngrx's state management.
I've discovered ngrx and it seemed to be a smarter option when it comes to state management. However, when i add these items to the state, the app hangs when adding images to the store and then performance slows down when accessing individual (and unrelated) flags from the store i.e. UI flag - draw is open.
1) Here "directories" is a Map < string, Directory > () object that is saved the the Store (~100-120Mb). Directory is a complex object with many nested values. Once images are loaded, and then added to the store, it a) hangs and then b) everything else (i.e. changing a ui flag) slows down.
return {
...state,
loadedDirectories: directories,
filesLoading: false,
};
2) The directories are then later accessed from the store.
this.store
.pipe(select(fromReducer.getLoadedDirectories))
.subscribe(loadedDirectories => {
this._directoryData = loadedDirectories;
});
Selector looks like this....
export interface ImageLoaderState {
loadedDirectories: Map<string, Directory>;
filesLoading: boolean;
errorMessage: string;
}
export class AppState {
imageLoader: fromImageLoader.ImageLoaderState;
}
export const combinedReducers = {
imageLoader: fromImageLoader.imageLoaderReducer
.... More reducers here ....
}
// Select Image loader state.
export const selectImageLoaderState = (state: AppState) => state.imageLoader;
export const getLoadedDirectories = createSelector(
selectImageLoaderState,
(state: fromImageLoader.ImageLoaderState) => state.loadedDirectories
);
Using angular 8 and the following versions of ngrx.
"#ngrx/effects": "^8.4.0",
"#ngrx/store": "^8.4.0",
"#ngrx/store-devtools": "^8.4.0",
Are there any better practices? i.e. Add each image, one at a time to the store?
The ngrx store is for application state and not so good as a document store.
Please see..
https://github.com/btroncone/ngrx-store-localstorage/issues/39
One issue I see is how you create your new state. You mention that when you create your new state, you do the following
return {
...state,
loadedDirectories: directories,
filesLoading: false,
};
I think you are creating an object with tons of key-value pairs, then recreating that work when you set the loadedDirectories property again. I'm uncertain about the performance costs of using the spread operator in the context of very large objects. I would suggest you focus on creating this property once. This might help you
Does spread operator affect performance?

Flow typing redux actions - performance issue

I followed flow docs and typed redux action creators using union (https://flow.org/en/docs/react/redux/#toc-typing-redux-actions)
so I have a file with ALL the actions gathered into 1 union like in example:
type Action =
| { type: "FOO", foo: number }
| { type: "BAR", bar: boolean }
| { type: "BAZ", baz: string };
Action type is imported in my reducers and used as in exxample from docs:
function reducer(state: State, action: Action): State {
switch (action.type) {
case "FOO": return { ...state, value: action.foo };
case "BAR": return { ...state, value: action.bar };
default:
(action: empty);
return state;
}
}
The problem:
As I mentioned I gathered ALL the actions in one file - currently ~600 actions in one union. I noticed that lately flow server takes crazy time to start (100+ seconds), rechecking flow is also a pain if change is related to reducer. According to flow logs, files that contain reducers are marked as "Slow MERGE" - 15 to 45s.
After experimenting, I noticed that changing my Action type to any cuts the time from 100s to 9s.
The question:
can this be related to huge Action union?
should I split it into a few smaller types which will contain only actions to import in particular reducer or this is a wrong way to fix my issue?
It's probably more likely that this one action type is used across your entire app. Any time you make a change to it, Flow needs to recheck a very large number of files. One way to help mitigate this is to ensure all your union actions are in files of their own that don't import other files. Flow can get slow if it has "cycles". One type imports another time which then imports the first time. This can happen if, for example, you define your reducer actions in the reducers themselves. This causes a cycle. Instead, move your action types to their own file.
Additionally, you can use flow cycle to output a dot file you can then visualize this file in something like Gephi https://gephi.org/ to detect cycles.

Access other slice of state in reducer using #ngrx/store

Given the following (and assuming we cannot change the state's structure):
StoreModule.forRoot({
a: aReducer,
b: {
b1: b1Reducer,
b2: b2Reducer
}
});
and b1Reducer is dependent on the value of a (for example because it contains something like user info).
What is the most idiomatic way to access (read-only) a in b1Reducer?
The solution I came up with is using #ngrx/effects, dispatch another action with a that can be used in the reducer:
#Effect()
augmentAction$ = this.action$
.ofType(Actions.Action1)
.withLatestFrom(this.store$)
.switchMap(([action, state]:[Action, AppState]) => {
const a = state.a;
return [new Actions.Action2(a)];
});
This works, but it becomes hard to manage if almost every action needs to be redispatched if a is used in many reducers. Is there a better way to handle this?

How to implement redux-search

I am trying to implement a search filter in my application which uses react/redux using redux-search. The first gotcha I get is when I try to add the store enhancer as in the example.
// Compose :reduxSearch with other store enhancers
const enhancer = compose(
applyMiddleware(...yourMiddleware),
reduxSearch({
// Configure redux-search by telling it which resources to index for searching
resourceIndexes: {
// In this example Books will be searchable by :title and :author
books: ['author', 'title']
},
// This selector is responsible for returning each collection of searchable resources
resourceSelector: (resourceName, state) => {
// In our example, all resources are stored in the state under a :resources Map
// For example "books" are stored under state.resources.books
return state.resources.get(resourceName)
}
})
)
I understand evarything up to the resourceSelector, when I tried to get a deep dive into the example to see how it works but I can barely see how they are generated and the last line returns an error, Cannot read property 'get' of undefined
My state object looks like this
state: {
//books is an array of objects...each object represents a book
books:[
//a book has these properties
{name, id, author, datePublished}
]
}
Any help from anyone who understands redux-search is helpful
If this line:
return state.resources.get(resourceName)
Is causing this error:
Cannot read property 'get' of undefined
That indicates that state.resources is not defined. And sure enough, your state doesn't define a resources attribute.
The examples were written with the idea in mind of using redux-search to index many types of resources, eg:
state: {
resources: {
books: [...],
authors: [...],
// etc
}
}
The solution to the issue you've reported would be to either:
A: Add an intermediary resources object (if you think you might want to index other things in the future and you like that organization).
B: Replace state.resources.get(resourceName) with state[resourceName] or similar.

Can I pass always the full state to reducers?

Is there any inconvenient at all if I design my reducers to, instead of reading only the partial state, had access to the full state tree?
So instead of writing this:
function reducer(state = {}, action) {
return {
a: doSomethingWithA(state.a, action),
b: processB(state.b, action),
c: c(state.c, action)
}
}
I destructure state inside doSomethingWithA, c or processB reducers, separately:
function reducer(state = {}, action) {
return {
a: doSomethingWithA(state, action), // calc next state based on a
b: processB(state, action), // calc next state based on b
c: c(state, action) // calc next state based on a, b and c
}
}
Would I'd be using more RAM? Is there any performance inconvenient? I understand that in javascript, a reference is always passed as parameter, that's why we should return a new object if we want to update the state or use Immutable.JS to enforce immutability, so... again, would it be of any inconvenient at all?
No, there's nothing wrong with that. Part of the reason for writing update logic as individual functions instead of separate Flux "stores" is that it gives you explicit control over chains of dependencies. If the logic for updating state.b depends on having state.a updated first, you can do that.
You may want to read through the Structuring Reducers section in the Redux docs, particularly the Beyond combineReducers topic. It discusses other various reducer structures besides the typical combineReducers approach. I also give some examples of this kind of structure in my blog post Practical Redux, Part 7: Form Change Handling, Data Editing, and Feature Reducers.

Resources