CODEWITHSUNDEEP
reduxreact-redux
Malo Guertin
Malo Guertin

Reputation: 327

Redux: Generic update action

I'm working with Redux and my state is a normalized one with a lot of different models. Now I was wondering myself if it was better to have specific actions like:

{type: CHANGE_MODEL_NAME, modelId, name}

vs

{type: UPDATE_MODEL, modelId, {name}}

I did a bit of searching and I found this question:

Is it ok to create generic redux update action

Now what I'm wondering is that no one is adressing the fact that having specific action types allow for different reducers to 'react' to an action in a cleaner way.

IE: I have a model that is copied from another model like so:

{
  name: 'foo',
  originalModel: id_0
}

It then becomes easier to react to specific actions in my reducer of copied models if I only want to react to the name change action.

Is it wrong for 2 reducers to react to the same actions? Is that why nobody adressed this issue in the original question?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1370

Answers (2)

Bert Goethals
Bert Goethals

Reputation: 7887

This is perfectly valid. This pattern even has a name. "Applying a change set"

Your message becomes the following:

{type: APPLY_CHANGSET, data: {id: idOfThingToApplyTo, propOne: '1', propTwo: '2'}}

Your reducers can then look like this:

const propOneReducer = (value = 'default', {type, {data: {propOne}}) => {
  return type === APPLY_CHANGSET && propOne !== undefined ? propOne : value;
}

This makes it a lot easier to add new properties (attributes) to your objects in your store. Adding a reducer, and sending the data from your react views to the actionCreator. In simple cases, you might not even need to change the actionCreator.

In these simple cases you can even build a reducer creator, basically creating the reducer for you.

Pro's

  • Less actions in the system
  • Simple sweet actionCreators

Not Pro's

  • Actions don't describe exactly what is happening. It's also harder to parse exactly what happens to the store after a actionCreator is invoked. This because the reducers now take the shape of the data into account.
  • Slightly more complex reducers

Upvotes: 1

markerikson
markerikson

Reputation: 67469

Having multiple slice reducers respond to the same actions is absolutely an intended use case for Redux. I covered that background in my post The Tao of Redux, Part 1 - Implementation and Intent.

As for your specific question: I think it's entirely valid to have an update action for normalized data that contains the item type name and the item ID. In fact, I demonstrated this exact approach in my post Practical Redux, Part 7: Form Change Handling, Data Editing, and Feature Reducers.

Overall, Redux itself doesn't care what specific action types you have and how generic they are. You are encouraged to define whatever actions are appropriate for your app, and what level of "abstraction" they represent. It's very reasonable to make them a bit more generic - for example, I'd prefer UPDATE_USER_ATTRIBUTES instead of SET_USER_FIRST_NAME and SET_USER_LAST_NAME, but ultimately it's up to you.

Upvotes: 2

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