Keep state while navigating between component in react-router - reactjs

Let's say I want to have a reusable react component in my project. I also want that component to have its state under different locations without losing it during component unmount. What is the correct way to deal with this kind of architecture in React? In other words, when the user navigates between these two routes react unmounts the previous component, therefore it loads remote data on every navigation between /user and /groups routes.
I also know that there is something called Redux. I don't see a clear way how to do it using reduct. Do I need two reducers? one for Users and the other for Groups? If so it's quite inconvenient creating a new reducer and write new logic each time when I need to use ReusableComponent.
Here is a similar skeleton to describe what I am trying to do. Any hint would be helpful.
//Router example
<Router>
<Switch>
<Route exact path=”/users” >
<UserComponent>
<ReusableComponent url=”http://apidomain.com/users” />
</UserComponent>
</Route>
<Route exact path=”/groups” >
<GroupComponent>
<ReusableComponent url=”http://apidomain.com/groups” />
</GroupComponent>
</Route>
</Switch>
</Router>
//ReusableComponent Example
<ReusableComponent>
--->use url, that passed from parent component tree(users or groups) to load data and keep in state
<ReusableComponentContext>
<Head />
<Body />
<Footer />
</ReusableComponentContext>
</ReusableComponent>
EDIT
So to describe my problem better is I need to have the same component with two or more parallel state on the different locations without overriding each other. If it's possible

I would use the "React Context" api. The context wrappes your app so if one component updates/ rerenderes the state which is stored inside of the context stayes untouched. To use Context you need three files:
"UserContext" = Example => rename!
Context Component (UserContext)
import { createContext } from "react"
export const UserContext = createContext(initValue)
Parent Component (Provider)
//filename: UserContext.js
//* import React, { useState } from "react"
//* import UserContext from "./UserContext"
const [state, setState] = useState("initState")
//* return(
<UserContext.Provider value={{state, setState}}> //value="props"
<ChildComponent/>
</UserContext.Provider>
Child Component (Consumer)
//*import React, { use Context } from "react";
//*import {UserContext} from "./UserContext"
const data = useContext(UserContext) //here "UserContext"
src: short explenation of usage
Edit: consuming with a custom hook
To avoid one import-statement you can create a custom Hook like this
import React, { use Context } from "react";
import {UserContext} from "./UserContext";
const useUserContext = (()=>{
const {state, setState} = useContext(UserContext)
//use effect if you want to set the context? with the hook...
return[state, setState]
})
in your remounting component
import useUserContext from "./useUserContext"
//rfce{
const {state, setState} = useUserContext()
//}

you can connect ReusableComponent to a piece of your redux store (see connect for more details).
import { connect } from "react-redux";
const ReusableComponent = (props) => {
// some logic before return
return <div>{props.magicProperty}</div>
}
const mapStateToProps = (state) => ({ magicProperty: state.magicProperty });
return connect(mapStateToProps)(ReusableComponent);
So every time you use ReusableComponent in you app, the magicProperty is shared, You can also connect some actions to the component in order to manage that part of state in the classical redux flow.

I think I found the solution. In my case, I had some misunderstanding on what level put context provider tag in the router component tree. So in React, it's very important to put the context provider wrapper in the right location. It holds a dedicated state only for those child components that are wrapped by that context provider.
In my case, I had ReusableComponentContext inside ReusableComponent and that was the wrong approach Because everywhere I used ReusableComponent it had individual context(Therefore individual state). I moved ReusableComponentContext on the top of a couple of components to solve my problem.

Related

Data on redux store return to initial state

For example, I store navigate on redux store when the app start:
//in App.js file
import { useNavigate } from 'react-router-dom'
const App = () => {
const navigate = useNavigate();
useEffect(() => {
dispatch(addNavigate(navigate))
}, [dispatch, navigate]);
}
And when I use useSelector to select navigate in redux store in another component, it returns undefined. How can I fix it (if I am not use useNavigate directly in this component) and why navigate object became initial state?
From the Redux Docs:
It is highly recommended that you only put plain serializable objects, arrays, and primitives into your store. It's technically possible to insert non-serializable items into the store, but doing so can break the ability to persist and rehydrate the contents of a store, as well as interfere with time-travel debugging.
If you are okay with things like persistence and time-travel debugging potentially not working as intended, then you are totally welcome to put non-serializable items into your Redux store. Ultimately, it's your application, and how you implement it is up to you. As with many other things about Redux, just be sure you understand what tradeoffs are involved.
With all that said, if you still want to add the navigate function from the useNavigate hook you would only be able to get a valid defined value for navigate if it is called in a child component of BrowserRouter from react-router-dom.
So in the top level component this wouldn't work, instead we'd need something like this for your App.js:
import { BrowserRouter } from 'react-router-dom'
import createStore from './createReduxStore'
const store = createStore()
const App = () => (
<BrowserRouter>
<Provider store={store}>
<Content />
</Provider
</BrowserRouter>
)
Then in your Content component you can do what you initially intended:
import { useNavigate } from 'react-router-dom'
const Content = () => {
const navigate = useNavigate();
useEffect(() => {
dispatch(addNavigate(navigate))
}, [navigate]);
}

React app does not have consistent provider for redux in children

I am building a React app with sagas for Redux and next.js. The main app.js file is handled as follows:
import { wrapper } from '../state/store';
const App = ({ Component, pageProps }) => (
<Layout>
<Component {...pageProps} />
</Layout>
);
export default wrapper.withRedux(App);
I can call and write to the state using dispatch for the pages in this app and some of their direct children. However, with others I get an error that is always something like ...
Error: could not find react-redux context value; please ensure the component is wrapped in a <Provider>
I don't understand how the parent page and some children are fine, but others have problems. It seems like components must be registered somewhere to be in the provider as every new component that I add has problems.
If the app is not wrapped in a provider, why does it work in the main page and some children? If it is wrapped, why aren't some components seeing that?

createContext hook not working for react components inside JSP

I am rendering my react component inside an existing JSP page using
ReactDOM.render(
React.createElement(MyReactComponents.myReactComponent, {
props
}),
document.querySelector("#id")
);
and the react component is as follows:
import MyStore from "./MyStore";
const MyReactComponent: React.FC<any> = (props: any) => {
const store = useContext(MyStore);
store.myFunction();
---code---
}
and MyStore is as follows:
export class MyStore{
---Code---
}
export default createContext(new MyStore());
But i'm getting this error:
And one more importing thing to notice is that when I'm trying to render this react component on top of another existing react component, i'm not getting any error and everything is working fine.
Can someone please explain me what might be causing the issue?
I'm not sure, but maybe you are misusing the useContext hook?
Whenever you use it inside a component Child, then at least one of its parent component must call the <Context>.Provider, so that it is initialized down the tree.
In your example, you render MyReactComponent using ReactDOM.render: due this, I suppose MyReactComponent is the first component in your tree. If that is the case, when you use useContext inside it, it cannot find any MyStore context.
So, probably, you just need to wrap your MyReactComponent with a context provider.
export class MyStore { ... }
export const MyStoreContext = createContext(new MyStore());
---
ReactDOM.render(
<MyStoreContext.Provider>
<MyReactComponent {...props />
</MyStoreContext.Provider>
, document.querySelector("#id"));
And then, inside MyReactComponent, you can use const store = useContext(MyStoreContext);.

NEXT JS - How to prevent layout get re-mounted?

Trying next with layout pattern:
https://github.com/zeit/next.js/tree/canary/examples/layout-component
And the problem is that Layout component get remounted on every page change. I need to use layout component as a Container so it'll fetch data from server on every mount. How can I prevent layout to get re-mounted? Or am I missing something there?
This helped me for persistent layouts. The author puts together a function that wraps your page components in your Layout component and then passes that fetch function to your _app.js. This way the _app.js is actually the components that renders the Layout but you get to specify which pages use which layout (in case you have multiple layouts).
So you have the flexibility of having multiple layouts throughout your site but those pages that share the same layout will actually share the same layout component and it will not have to be remounted on navigation.
Here is the link to the full article
Persistent Layout Patterns in Next.js
Here are the important code snippets. A page and then _app.js
// /pages/account-settings/basic-information.js
import SiteLayout from '../../components/SiteLayout'
import AccountSettingsLayout from '../../components/AccountSettingsLayout'
const AccountSettingsBasicInformation = () => (
<div>{/* ... */}</div>
)
AccountSettingsBasicInformation.getLayout = page => (
<SiteLayout>
<AccountSettingsLayout>{page}</AccountSettingsLayout>
</SiteLayout>
)
export default AccountSettingsBasicInformation
// /pages/_app.js
import React from 'react'
import App from 'next/app'
class MyApp extends App {
render() {
const { Component, pageProps, router } = this.props
const getLayout = Component.getLayout || (page => page)
return getLayout(<Component {...pageProps}></Component>)
}
}
export default MyApp
If you put your Layout component inside page component it will be re-remounted on page navigation (page switch).
You can wrap your page component with your Layout component inside _app.js, it should prevent it from re-mounting.
Something like this:
// _app.js
import Layout from '../components/Layout';
class MyApp extends App {
static async getInitialProps(appContext) {
const appProps = await App.getInitialProps(appContext);
return {
...appProps,
};
}
render() {
const { Component, pageProps } = this.props;
return (
<Layout>
<Component {...pageProps} />
<Layout />
);
}
}
export default MyApp;
Also, make sure you replace all the to <Link href=""></Link>, notice that only have change the Html tag to link.
I struggled because with this for many days, although I was doing everything else correctly, these <a> tags were the culprit that was causing the _app.js remount on page change
Even though this is the topic Layout being mounted again and again, the root cause of this problem is that you have some data loaded in some child component which is getting fetched again and again.
After some fooling around, I found none of these problem is actually what Next.Js or SWR solves. The question, back to square one, is how to streamline a single copy of data to some child component.
Context
Use context as a example.
Config.js
import { createContext } from 'react'
export default createContext({})
_App.js
import Config from '../Config'
export default function App({ Component, pageProps }) {
return (
<Config.Provider value={{ user: { name: 'John' }}}>
<Component {...pageProps} />
</Config.Provider>
)
}
Avatar.js
import { useContext } from 'react'
import Config from '../Config'
function Avatar() {
const { user } = useContext(Config)
return (
<span>
{user.name}
</span>
)
}
export default Avatar
No matter how you mount and dismount, you won't end up with re-render, as long as the _app doesn't.
Writable
The above example is only dealing with readable. If it's writable, you can try to pass a state into context. setUser will take care the set in consumer.
<Provider value={useState({})} />
const [user, setUser] = useContext(Config)
setUser is "cached" and won't be updated. So we can use this function to reset the user anytime in child consumer.
There're other ways, ex. React Recoil. But more or less you are dealing with a state management system to send a copy (either value or function) to somewhere else without touching other nodes. I'll leave this as an answer, since even we solved Layout issue, this problem won't disappear. And if we solve this problem, we don't need to deal with Layout at all.

How do I write a storybook story for a component that has redux-connected component as grandchild?

We are building a Storybook UI library from our existing code base. The code wasn't written with component driven development in mind. There are many instances where a component renders descendants that are connected to the Redux store.
E.g., Parent (connected) -> Child (unconnected) -> Grandchild (connected)
Now if I'm building a story for Parent, I understand how to pass hard-coded data as a prop to an immediate child component in order to avoid Redux all together. However, I can't figure out how to do this when the connected component is more deeply nested.
Ideally I don't want to have to use Redux at all for stories, but even if I do initialize a Redux store and wrap the parent component in a Provider as described here, would this even work to connect the grandchild component?
Any ideas would be helpful.
When using storybook you can add a Decorator for all stories (see link for most updated API).
It is common to wrap your stories with the state manager store provider in order to not break the story avoiding "adding a store for each story".
// # config.js
import { configure, addDecorator } from '#storybook/react';
import React from 'react';
import { createStore } from 'redux';
import { Provider } from 'react-redux';
import rootReducer from 'reducers/root.reducer';
const store = createStore(rootReducer);
addDecorator(S => (
<Provider store={store}>
<S />
</Provider>
));
configure(require.context('../src', true, /\.stories\.js$/), module);
Note that you can avoid connecting all your components with redux-hooks which in addition removes all the boilerplate code of redux.
React Redux now offers a set of hook APIs as an alternative to the existing connect() Higher Order Component. These APIs allow you to subscribe to the Redux store and dispatch actions, without having to wrap your components in connect().
If you want to solve the problem within your story file (and just fetch your store), use decorator like this:
import React from "react";
import { Provider } from 'react-redux'
import Parent from "./Parent";
import { store } from "../../../redux/store";
export default = {
title: "pages/Parent",
component: Parent,
decorators : [
(Story) => (<Provider store={store}><Story/></Provider>)
]
};
Sidenote, if this gives you the error useNavigate() may be used only in the context of a <Router> component., then you may need <MemoryRouter><Provider store={store}><Story/></Provider></MemoryRouter> (import {MemoryRouter} from 'react-router-dom')

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