To Redux or Not: the Art of Structuring State in React Apps

This article explores effective Redux state management strategies, addressing the common developer tendency to overuse Redux and the setState() method. It emphasizes the distinction between UI state and application state, advocating for a more nuanced approach to improve performance and scalability.

The core argument centers on avoiding the pitfalls of managing all data within the Redux store, especially as application complexity increases. The author presents several key takeaways:

• Redux as a Single Source of Truth (SSOT): Redux serves as the SSOT for application state, utilizing actions, reducers, a store, and containers for efficient state management. However, developers must differentiate between application state (persistent data) and UI state (transient, view-specific data). Over-reliance on Redux for UI state is inefficient.

• Separating Application Data and UI State: This separation significantly boosts performance and scalability. The example of a character_show_description object, indexed by character ID, illustrates how to avoid unnecessary loops when updating individual elements in a large dataset.

• Form State Management: Handling form state in Redux can be cumbersome due to frequent state changes and performance hits from full DOM reconciliation. The article suggests wrapping forms in a component to manage local state, minimizing the impact on the entire component tree.

• Strategic State Placement: The author provides guidelines for deciding where to store state: application data used repeatedly across the application should reside in Redux; UI state should only be in Redux if it has global dependencies. Otherwise, local React component state is preferable.

The article uses a Game of Thrones character listing page as a practical example, demonstrating different approaches to managing state:

• setState() Approach: A simple, React-centric method suitable for small, localized UI state.

• Redux Approach (Initial): Storing UI state (show/hide character description) directly within the character objects in the Redux store. This works well for smaller applications but becomes inefficient with large datasets.

• Redux Approach (Optimized): Introducing a separate character_show_description object in the Redux store, indexed by character ID, to optimize updates for large datasets.

• Form State in Redux: The article demonstrates how to manage form state in Redux, highlighting the performance challenges and proposing a wrapper component solution to mitigate them. It also shows how to handle validation errors, keeping error state separate for flexibility.

• Refactoring Form State to React: To further improve performance, the author demonstrates moving form state entirely into the React component's local state, while still maintaining error handling within the Redux store.

The conclusion emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between UI and application state and provides clear rules for deciding where to store each type of state. The author concludes that a well-structured Redux approach, focusing on accurate application state management, significantly reduces front-end complexity.

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