Accessing Apollo's loading boolean outside of Mutation component - reactjs

Question

The Mutation component in react-apollo exposes a handy loading boolean in the render prop function which is ideal for adding loaders to the UI whilst a request is being made. In the example below my Button component calls the createPlan function when clicked which initiates a GraphQL mutation. Whilst this is happening a spinner appears on the button courtesy of the loading prop.
<Mutation mutation={CREATE_PLAN}>
{(createPlan, { loading }) => (
<Button
onClick={() => createPlan({ variables: { input: {} } })}
loading={loading}
>
Save
</Button>
)}
</Mutation>
The issue I have is that other aspects of my UI also need to change based on this loading boolean. I have tried lifting the Mutation component up the React tree so that I can manually pass the loading prop down to any components which rely on it, which works, but the page I am building has multiple mutations that can take place at any given time (such as deleting a plan, adding a single item in a plan, deleting a single item in a plan etc.) and having all of these Mutation components sitting at the page-level component feels very messy.
Is there a way that I can access the loading property outside of this Mutation component? If not, what is the best way to handle this problem? I have read that you can manually update the Apollo local state using the update function on the Mutation component (see example below) but I haven't been able to work out how to access the loading value here (plus it feels like accessing the loading property of a specific mutation without having to manually write it to the cache yourself would be a common request).
<Mutation
mutation={CREATE_PLAN}
update={cache => {
cache.writeData({
data: {
createPlanLoading: `I DON"T HAVE ACCESS TO THE LOADING BOOLEAN HERE`,
},
});
}}
>
{(createPlan, { loading }) => (
<Button
onClick={() => createPlan({ variables: { input: {} } })}
loading={loading}
>
Save
</Button>
)}
</Mutation>

Answer 1

I face the same problem in my projects and yes, putting all mutations components at the page-level component is very messy. The best way I found to handle this is by creating React states. For instance:
const [createPlanLoading, setCreatePLanLoading] = React.useState(false);
...
<Mutation mutation={CREATE_PLAN} onCompleted={() => setCreatePLanLoading(false)}>
{(createPlan, { loading }) => (
<Button
onClick={() => {
createPlan({ variables: { input: {} } });
setCreatePLanLoading(true);
}
loading={loading}
>
Save
</Button>
)}
</Mutation>

Answer 2

I like the answer with React States. However, when there are many different children it looks messy with so many variables.
I've made a bit update for it for these cases:
const Parent = () => {
const [loadingChilds, setLoading] = useState({});
// check if at least one child item is loading, then show spinner
const loading = Object.values(loadingChilds).reduce((t, value) => t || value, false);
return (
<div>
{loading ? (
<CircularProgress />
) : null}
<Child1 setLoading={setLoading}/>
<Child2 setLoading={setLoading}/>
</div>
);
};
const Child1 = ({ setLoading }) => {
const [send, { loading }] = useMutation(MUTATION_NAME);
useEffect(() => {
// add info about state to the state object if it's changed
setLoading((prev) => (prev.Child1 !== loading ? { ...prev, Child1: loading } : prev));
});
const someActionHandler = (variables) => {
send({ variables});
};
return (
<div>
Child 1 Content
</div>
);
};
const Child2 = ({ setLoading }) => {
const [send, { loading }] = useMutation(MUTATION_NAME2);
useEffect(() => {
// add info about state to the state object if it's changed
setLoading((prev) => (prev.Child2 !== loading ? { ...prev, Child2: loading } : prev));
});
const someActionHandler = (variables) => {
send({ variables});
};
return (
<div>
Child 2 Content
</div>
);
};