Prerequisite Reducer Concepts

As described in Reducers, a Redux reducer function:

• Should have a signature of (previousState, action) => newState, similar to the type of function you would pass to Array.prototype.reduce(reducer, ?initialValue)
• Should be "pure", which means it does not mutate its arguments, perform side effects like API calls or modifying values outside of the function, or call non-pure functions like Date.now() or Math.random(). This also means that updates should be done in an "immutable" fashion, which means always returning new objects with the updated data, rather than directly modifying the original state tree in-place.

Note on immutability, side effects, and mutation #

Mutation is discouraged because it generally breaks time-travel debugging, and React Redux's connect function:

• For time traveling, the Redux DevTools expect that replaying recorded actions would output a state value, but not change anything else. Side effects like mutation or asynchronous behavior will cause time travel to alter behavior between steps, breaking the application.
• For React Redux, connect checks to see if the props returned from a mapStateToProps function have changed in order to determine if a component needs to update. To improve performance, connect takes some shortcuts that rely on the state being immutable, and uses shallow reference equality checks to detect changes. This means that changes made to objects and arrays by direct mutation will not be detected, and components will not re-render.

Other side effects like generating unique IDs or timestamps in a reducer also make the code unpredictable and harder to debug and test.

Because of these rules, it's important that the following core concepts are fully understood before moving on to other specific techniques for organizing Redux reducers:

Redux Reducer Basics #

Key concepts:

• Thinking in terms of state and state shape
• Delegating update responsibility by slice of state (reducer composition)
• Higher order reducers
• Defining reducer initial state

Reading list:

• Redux Docs: Reducers
• Redux Docs: Reducing Boilerplate
• Redux Docs: Implementing Undo History
• Redux Docs: combineReducers
• The Power of Higher-Order Reducers
• Stack Overflow: Store initial state and combineReducers
• Stack Overflow: State key names and combineReducers

Pure Functions and Side Effects #

Key Concepts:

• Side effects
• Pure functions
• How to think in terms of combining functions

Reading List:

• The Little Idea of Functional Programming
• Understanding Programmatic Side Effects
• Learning Functional Programming in Javascript
• An Introduction to Reasonably Pure Functional Programming

Immutable Data Management #

Key Concepts:

• Mutability vs immutability
• Immutably updating objects and arrays safely
• Avoiding functions and statements that mutate state

Reading List:

• Pros and Cons of Using Immutability With React
• Javascript and Immutability
• Immutable Data using ES6 and Beyond
• Immutable Data from Scratch
• Redux Docs: Using the Object Spread Operator

Normalizing Data #

Key Concepts:

• Database structure and organization
• Splitting relational/nested data up into separate tables
• Storing a single definition for a given item
• Referring to items by IDs
• Using objects keyed by item IDs as lookup tables, and arrays of IDs to track ordering
• Associating items in relationships

Reading List:

• Database Normalization in Simple English
• Idiomatic Redux: Normalizing the State Shape
• Normalizr Documentation
• Redux Without Profanity: Normalizr
• Querying a Redux Store
• Wikipedia: Associative Entity
• Database Design: Many-to-Many
• Avoiding Accidental Complexity When Structuring Your App State