React Hooks vs Redux Demystified

This means you can create selectors that do things like filtering or sorting, and ensure that the real work only happens if needed. While it is possible to write Redux store subscription logic by hand, doing so would become very repetitive. In addition, optimizing UI performance would require complicated logic. If performance is a concern, the best way to improve performance is to skip unnecessary re-renders, so that components only re-render when their data has actually changed. React Redux implements many performance optimizations internally, so that your own component only re-renders when it actually needs to. So, the reducers make a copy of the entire current state first, make the necessary changes, and then return a fresh new instance of the state – with all the necessary changes/ updates.

Predictability of outcome – Since there is always one source of truth, i.e. the store, there is no confusion about how to sync the current state with actions and other parts of the application. Maintainability – The code becomes easier to maintain with a predictable outcome and strict structure. Server-side rendering – You just need to pass the store created on the server, to the client-side. This is very useful for initial render and provides a better user experience as it optimizes the application performance. Developer tools – From actions to state changes, developers can track everything going on in the application in real-time. Community and ecosystem – Redux has a huge community behind it which makes it even more captivating to use.

Why is my component re-rendering too often?​

This allows you to debug your applications effectively, including using powerful techniques like “time-travel debugging”. Take some time to think about the kind of app you’re building, and decide what tools would be best to help solve the problems you’re working on. Redux helps you deal with shared state management, but like any tool, it has tradeoffs. It also adds some indirection to your code, and asks you to follow certain restrictions. It’s important to consider the complexity and specific requirements of your project when deciding whether to use Redux or the Context API.

While with the new React Hooks additions, useContext and useReducer, you can manage the global state, in projects with larger complexity you can rely on Redux to help you manage the application data. If you do not provide your own mapDispatchToProps function when calling connect(), React Redux will provide a default version, which simply returns the dispatch function as a prop. That means that if you do provide your own function, dispatch is not automatically provided. If you still want it available as a prop, you need to explicitly return it yourself in your mapDispatchToProps implementation.

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A large community of talented individuals contribute to the betterment of the library and develop various applications with it. Ease of testing – Redux’s code is mostly functions which are small, pure and isolated. [Organization][2] – Redux is precise about how code should be organized, this makes the code more consistent and easier when a team works with it. There is a key difference in how Redux and React’s Context treat data.

• At this moment, the usual way of transferring state as props turns out to be complex as not every component is a parent to the component requiring the state.
• Essentially, the React Context API is React’s way of managing state in multiple components that are not directly connected.
• In the example below, we are using the new React Hook addiction useReducer to control one component with different states.
• Note how in the above example, we dispatch an action on click of the button.
• The process of subscribing to the store, checking for updated data, and triggering a re-render can be made more generic and reusable.

We will learn what Redux is at its core along with its three key principles. That counter example was small, but it does show all the working pieces of a real Redux app. Everything we’ll talk about in the following sections expands on those basic pieces.

What is state management in React?

It offers centralized state management, predictable state updates, efficient component communication, scalability, and benefits from a thriving ecosystem and community support. By combining the strengths of ReactJS and Redux, you can build robust, maintainable, and scalable applications with ease. Whenever we dispatch an action with a certain type, we need to make sure to have appropriate reducers to handle that action.

And yet, far too many React developers default to Redux for state management without considering the alternatives. In this tutorial, we’ll introduce you to the React Context API for state management and explain how React Hooks and the Context API can replace Redux. When choosing between React Context API and Redux, it’s important to consider the specific needs and constraints of your project. React Context API is more suitable for scenarios where state updates are infrequent or simple, and centralized state management is not critical. On the other hand, Redux is more suitable for scenarios where state updates are frequent or complex, and centralized state management is critical. Redux is a predictable state management library for JavaScript applications.

Core Principles of Redux

This results in writing a ton of extra code, and giving components properties that they will never use also affects their architectural design. To solve this problem, we need to provide a global state that all components can access, no matter how deeply nested they are. This results in a fairly effective solution for state management in React applications.

Redux is a predictable state container for JavaScript applications that helps us write applications that behave consistently, run in different environments, and are easy to test. By solving this problem, Redux, an open source JavaScript library for managing application state, became the go-to solution for React developers. Redux helps to centralize all data while enabling components to get the state it needs – without other components knowing that. These two technologies are often used together – as you will see in the following examples of some pretty impressive applications. Never write directly to the state and the state should be updated by emitting actions.

Redux FAQ: React Redux

To understand why you should use React Redux, it may help to understand what a “UI binding library” does. Redux itself is a standalone library that can be used with any UI layer or framework, including React, Angular, Vue, Ember, and vanilla JS. Although Redux and React are commonly used together, they are independent of each other.

In the above example, on clicking the button, we had dispatched an action with an action creator called addItemToCart(). This action creator has dispatched an action with the type ADD_ITEM_TO_CART. So reducers are basically pure JS functions which take in the previous state and an action and return the newly updated state. The state of the whole application is what is redux stored in the form of a JS object tree in a single store as shown below. In the following section, we will dive deep into the core concepts of Redux – the store, actions and reducers. What makes Redux predictable is that to make a change in the state of the application, we need to dispatch an action which describes what changes we want to make in the state.

Redux vs. React Hooks and the Context API

While it is possible to write this logic by hand, doing so would become very repetitive. Note that the state parameter is a default parameter which accepts an initial state. This is to handle the scenario when the reducer is called for the first time when the state value is undefined. Given an initial state, with a specific list of actions in a specific order, it’ll always provide us with the exact same final state of the entity. This task of handling multiple states from multiple components efficiently can become challenging when the application grows in size. In any application, the user interface will show existing state on screen.