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🏀 Effect middleware for redux, inspired by loop and thunk ➿
Schedule async functions from reducers to run after reducers using dispatch-getstate store api.

build status npm version npm downloads

An Effect is just an async function that takes the store's dispatch and getState function.

async ({ dispatch, getState }) => any

Shape of an EffectCreator:

(...extraParams) => async ({ dispatch, getState }) => any

Effects are scheduled using dunk(state, ...effects) in the reducer. Calling dunk returns the state as it is. Effects start running after the reducer has updated the state.

API

dunk

  • dunk(nextState, ...effects) - schedules given effects to run parallelly after reducer has finished, and returns the given state as it is.

Effect creators

  • Effect(effect) - let's you easily create an effect, input shape: async ({ dispatch, getState }) => any
  • EffectCreator(effectCreator) - easily create an effect creator, input shape:
    (...extraParams) => async ({ dispatch, getState }) => any

Use Effect to create your effect without extra parameters, use EffectCreator when the effect needs extra parameters.

When you create effects with these two helpers you get Effects with (monadic) EffectApi:

Effect Api

  • .andThen(effect) -- chain effects that run after each other if they succeed
  • .catch(effect) -- if the effect fails run this effect

not implemented

  • .fmap(res => effect) or .fmap(effectCreator) -- not implemented as we found it can lead to bad practices. Dispatch actions and dunk the next effect in those instead
  • fold -- not yet implemented - based on requests
  • sleep -- not yet implemented - based on requests

Effect composers

Each of these return an Effect so you can compose them.

  • Delay(ms, effect) - run effect after ms delay
  • Sequence(…effects) - run effects in order waiting for promise to resolve. if one fails the effect fails
  • Par(…effects) - same as dunk(state, …effects), starts running effects parallelly
  • Catch(effect, failEffect) try to run effect if it fails run the failEffect
  • Do() - i.e No Op, effect that does nothing, you can start a chain description with this, use it wherever

Usage

1. Create your store with dunkMiddleware

    return createStore(
        getReducer(props),
        getInitialState(props),
        composeEnhancers(applyMiddleware(dunkMiddleware)),
    );

2. Create your effects in your effects file

To use the Effect creator/composer functions you need to import the EffectCreators function, then call it with your State type to get typed helpers.

const { Effect, EffectCreator } = EffectCreators<State>();

3. Use your effects in your reducers

Import your effects, and dunk them. You can import composers in your reducer if you need to. Examples below.

Examples

Example effects:

const setUpSomeIO = Effect( async ({ dispatch }) => {
    const configResponse = await io.setup({});
    dispatch(actions.setIOStatus(configResponse.status));
});

const pollInfo = EffectCreator((userId: UserId) => async ({ dispatch }) => {
    poll(() => fetch('something.json'), 2000, 150
    ).then(res =>
        dispatch(actions.pollStatus(res)
    ).catch(err => 
        dispatch(actions.pollFailed(err)
    );
});

const fetchUser = Effect( async ({ dispatch }) => {
    fetch('/user')
        .then(res => dispatch(actions.fetchUserSuccess(res))
        .catch(err => dispatch(actions.fetchUserFail(err));
});

const setUpListeners = Effect( async ({ dispatch }) => {
    someting.addListener('some-important-event', data => {
        dispatch(actions.importantEventUpdated(data))
    });
});

Now dunk effects. Usage examples in a reducer:

const { Sequence, Delay, Catch } = EffectCreators<State>();

// in the reducer function:
return dunk(newState) // does nothing interesting
return dunk(newState, Effects.doTheThing) // paramterless Effect
return dunk(newState, Effects.reorderTopic(topicId, targetIdx)); // effect created with parameters

case actions.startSetup.actionType: {
    const { token, userId } = action.payload;

     // compose effects to describe your flow in a testable way
    const effects = [
        Sequence(
            Effects.setUpSomeIO, 
            Effects.authenticate(token), 
            Effects.fetchUser,
            Effects.pollInfo(userId)
        ),
        Effects.setUpListeners,
    ];
    return dunk(state, ...effects);
}; 

    // you can also chain effects with dot notation api:
    const effects = [
        Effects.setUpSomeIO
            .andThen(Effects.authenticate(token))
            .andThen(Effects.fetchUser),
            .andThen(Effects.pollInfo(userId))
        Effects.setUpListeners,
    ];
    return dunk(state, ...effects)

With dunk you can express business logic by composing effects together.

How effects are run with the redux store?

image

  1. There is a dispatch(action) somewhere
  2. action goes to reducer
  3. reducer creates new state, and calls dunk(newState, ...effects) which schedules effects in the queue to run later.
  4. reducer finishes and dunk as a next middleware gets called
  5. dunk schedules the effects in the queue to run in the end of this event-loop tick (using promises, to the js job queue)
  6. effects run and might dispatch actions for the next redux round, or read the state whenever.

note

  • Effect's can't (and shouldn't) be called from a reducer. They are run by dunk and each effect is provided the store api (dispatch and getState) upon running.
  • Remember Effect if an async function, EffectCreator is a higher-order function that returns an Effect.
  • Effects are always scheduled to run after the reducer round that scheduled them has finished.
  • Effects are async functions
  • Effects run deferred async (end of current event-loop tick)
  • getState always returns the latest state in the store, not the one it was when the effect was scheduled (this is 👍 )
  • So far we haven't found a valid use case for using getState in an effect. If the effect needs parameters they should be provided with the effect creator as extra params. It might be useful to getState when you have a long-running effect that needs to check the state at later times.
  • avoid never-ending loops (action->reducer->effect->action->..) ⚠️ (same in loop)

Motivation

Dunk was created to address the shortcomings of the existing redux effect libraries, while working on Prezi's Prezi Video UI. redux-loop has a good architecture, but has shortcomings (addressed below), redux-thunk doesn't let you separate actions from effect hence you can't run effects after a state change triggered by an action, although thunk provides dispatch, getState for the effects. On the other hand redux-saga seemed like heavy artillery.

Comparison with redux-loop ➿

Every loop is a dunk but not every dunk is a loop:

Shape of a Loop Cmd:

  Cmd.run(apiFetch, {
     successActionCreator: resolveActionCreator,
     failActionCreator: rejectActionCreator,
     args: [action.payload.id]
  })

Here is how you can recreate the loop Cmd in 10 lines with Dunk:

  function LoopCmd(
      promise: (...params: Params) => Promise<ReturnType>,
      successActionCreator: ActionCreator,
      failedActionCreator: ActionCreator,
  ) {
      return EffectCreator((...params: Params) => storeApi => {
          return promise(...params)
              .then(res => storeApi.dispatch(successAction(...res)))
              .catch(res => storeApi.dispatch(failedAction(...res)));
      });
  }
  
  LoopCmd(apiFetch, successActionCreator, failActionCreator)

Architecturally both loop and dunk are very similar. The way to think about both of them is that that you can schedule async functions that run after the reducer and can trigger new state changes with dispatch. Optionally you can get the current state in the effect, both in dunk and loop using getState.

Commonalities 🤝

  • Same architecture action -> reducer -> effect separation (effect/command)
  • Typed Effects/Commands
  • Redux store can be used the same way

Why dunk is better 🏀

  • Powerful Effect api to your needs: any extra params plus each effets gets the getState, dispatch store api functions.
  • Easy testing with Jest and redux-mock-store (see example)
  • Effects are composable and chainable.
  • You don't have to bloat your code with unnecessary effect -> action -> reducer -> effect loops. You can describe your complex effect logic in your reducers, by composing or chaining them using composers and the EffectApi dot notation functions.
  • You are free in your effects, no success/fail action restrictions, dispatch as many actions as you want
  • Understandable effects: explicit dispatch calls, no mind wrapped args and implicit calls of dispatch
  • Composable effect creator helpers out of the box: Delay, Sequence, Par, Catch and more coming, all of these return an Effect.
  • Dunk is written in Typescript
  • Dunk is a much smaller library, helpers included
  • While loop installs as an enhancer, we found there is no need for that. dunk is only a middleware. This simplifies the architecture of the library.

Why loop could be better

  • A Dunk Effect's type doesn't tell which actions will be dispatched if any (because you write whatever you want in the effect body), however a loop command tells you about the next actions in it's type.
  • More freedom in effects might lead to bad code? Loop has a strict view on effects which might work for you and might keep your codebase better structured if there are many developers working on it.

Todos

  • More effect helpers (Chain, Retry, Poll, Race) - based on requests
  • Cancelable, TakeOne and other action trigger based complex Effects. (like saga) - based on requests

Questions/Discussions

About dunk as middleware

While loop installs as an enhancer, we found there is no need for that. dunk is only a middleware. Calling loop returns a modified object that contains the effects, however dunk simply returns the state object it got, and queues the effects in the internal queue. This is partly because dunk is a middleware, not an enhancer, which simplifies the architecture of the library.

Multi store setup

This is not supported yet. Generally it's not recommended to have multiple stores in one bundle (app) (https://redux.js.org/faq/store-setup#can-or-should-i-create-multiple-stores-can-i-import-my-store-directly-and-use-it-in-components-myself) but we can make support for this. It would require you to set up dunk middleware, dunk function and Effect creators together, and use those instances together consistently (with all redux parts: store, reducer, actions, dispatch). This is necessary to separate the state of multiple dunk middlewares: the effect queues and any potential stateful Effects (such as the planned Cancellable).

Why Effect is an interface not a class?

Creating an Effect with Effect(...) and EffectCreator(...) returns you an object with two interfaces implemented: Effect and EffectApi. There are a couple of reasons why Effect should be an interface.

  1. An effect should be a function that can be called like effect(storeapi) but it can also have properties, like the EffectApi. This is because functions are objects too in JS, and we should take advantage of this.
  2. Effects should be kept lightweight.
  3. It's better for the user, better DX. The user should be able to dunk an effect function so long the shape is an Effect without the need call the Effect(...) function (that would return an instance of a class).
  4. In my opinion using interfaces is better developing the library too. Interfaces are composable, and easy to follow, but using classes is a restriction imo (not just because we would have to call new)