Persist user activity in state after reload - reactjs

I have created an application where user can search information related to movies using react and redux. While searching user can apply some filter(For eg. time duration). I want this filter to be active till user unselect them even after user reloads the page.
Problem:
Current scenario user apply filter application will dispatch an event and store the filter information in Redux state.
But as soon as user refresh the page information about the filter get lost.
Solution Tried:
I have tried one solution using session storage and local storage, but I am not convinced with the solution.
It would be great if somebody can show better way of solving this problem if available.

For some simple states, like current value of filter, it would be better to use location.
For example, you have the following page: http://example.com/users.
Then you can preserve filter like this: http://example.com/users?group=admin.
The benefit of this approach is simple: you explicitly say to user the actual state of the page, he can copy that, save bookmark, or send to somebody else.
To achieve this in React code, you can do the following (I assume that you have React-router in your app):
class UsersPage extends React.Component {
// should be called somewhere in onClick
filterUserGroup(groupName) {
this.props.router.push({
pathname: this.props.location.pathname,
query: {
group: groupName
}
});
}
componentWillReceiveProps(nextProps) {
if(nextProps.location !== this.props.location) {
//filter was changed, you can apply new filter value
this.setState({
selectedGroup: nextProps.location.query.group
});
}
}
}

Related

How to not lose my information in props when i reaload my pages?

I'm new in react and i'm studing a method to make connections with Firebase to my Project.
With props I can pass an ID and search it in firebase, but when i reload my page, all the props are lost and i have this message in the image:
The value is Undefined because the props are losing their values
Is there any other way for this information don't lost?
I dont try anything because idk what to do.
The ID in the props will be used in useEffect() on my page.
Edit:
There is the Cards Image:
Cards
And here it's when i click on the card "Pinscher":
The page when i click on Pinscher
But when i Reload the page "Pinscher", i lost the Id passed with props.
The most straightforward way I know to persist data over a reload is to save it to localstorage or sessionstorage. Which one to use--and whether it's appropriate--depend on your actual use case, which we can't comment on without more knowledge of your project.
Assuming you did want to use that, a basic implementation would be to write helper functions when you set state to also save the data to storage. Your initial state load would then look for storage information as its default and then fallback to null if it can't find anything in storage.
const [arbData, setArbData] = useState(window.localStorage.getItem('arbData'));
const setArbDataWrapper = (data) => {
setArbData(data);
window.localStorage.set('arbData', data);
}

Better way to update react component on event

I'm making a web-app in which I use React, together with Firebase Authentication. I have a login page and I want it to redirect to a different page when a user is already signed in.
To check if the user is logged in I use a method to retrieve the User object, it returns null when a user is not signed in and a user object with all sorts of data if they are.
I have an if statement in my render method (of the login page) which checks if the user is logged in, but I ran into an issue. When a user first loads up the page it takes around half a second for the Firebase API to retrieve the user object and until that is completed my user object will return null.
This makes for an issue where it seems as though my user isn't logged in even if they are. That causes them not to redirect and stay on the login page until the state is updated in some way after the user object is initialized.
Firebase offers a way to fix this by giving us an onAuthStateChanged() method which allows me to execute a function when a user signs in or logs out.
What I'm doing now is using this method in the constructor method of my Login page class to manually re-render the component, thus redirecting the user when Firebase logs them in. It looks something like this:
export default class Login extends React.Component<Props, State> {
constructor(props:Props) {
super(props)
this.props.firebase.auth().onAuthStateChanged((user) => {
const oldState = this.state
this.setState(oldState)
})
}
render () {
if (this.props.firebase.auth().currentUser) {
return (
<Redirect to="/earn" />
)
} else {
return (
// Login page
)
}
}
}
(I omitted some irrelevant code)
Now this works fine and all but I'm not sure if this is the correct way to do it and I feel like I could make it look a lot nicer, I just don't know how.
Any suggestions or official ways to achieve what I'm doing right now are very much appreciated.

Where should I load data from server in Redux + ReactJS?

For example I have two components - ListOfGroupsPage and GroupPage.
In ListOfGroupsPage I load list of groups from the server and store it to the state.groups
In route I have mapping like ‘group/:id’ for GroupPage
When this address is loaded, the app shows GroupPage, and here I get the data for group from state.groups (try to find group in state via id).
All works fine.
But if I reload page, I'm still on page /group/2, so GroupPage is shown. But state is empty, so the app can't find the group.
What is the proper way to load data in React + Redux? I can see this ways:
1) Load all data in root component. It will be very big overhead from traffic side
2) Don't rely on store, try to load required data on each component. It's more safe way. But I don't think that load the same data for each component - it's cool idea. Then we don't need the state - because each component will fetch the data from server
3) ??? Probably add some kind of checking in each component - first try to find required data in store. If can't - load from the server. But it requires much of logic in each component.
So, is there the best solution to fetch data from server in case of usage Redux + ReactJS?
One approach to this is to use redux-thunk to check if the data exist in the redux store and if not, send a server request to load the missing info.
Your GroupPage component will look something like
class GroupPage extends Component {
componentWillMount() {
const groupId = this.props.params.groupId
this.props.loadGroupPage(groupId);
}
...
}
And in your action...
const loadGroupPage = (groupId) => (dispatch, getState) => {
// check if data is in redux store
// assuming your state.groups is object with ids as property
const {
groups: {
[groupId]: groupPageData = false
}
} = getState();
if (!groupPageData) {
//fetch data from the server
dispatch(...)
}
}
I recommend caching the information on the client using localstorage. Persist your Redux state, or important parts of it, to localstorage on state change, and check for existing records in localstorage on load. Since the data would be on the client, it would be simple and quick to retrieve.
The way I approach this is to fetch from the server straight after the store has been created. I do this by dispatching actions. I also use thunks to set isFetching = true upon a *_REQUEST and set that back to false after a *_SUCCESS or *_FAILURE. This allows me to display the user things like a progress bar or spinner. I think you're probably overestimating the 'traffic' issue because it will be executed asynchronosly as long as you structure your components in a way that won't break if that particular part of the store is empty.
The issue you're seeing of "can't get groups of undefined" (you mentioned in a comment) is probably because you've got an object and are doing .groups on it. That object is most likely empty because it hasn't been populated. There are couple of things to consider here:
Using ternary operators in your components to check that someObject.groups isn't null; or
Detailing in the initialState for someObject.groups to be an empty array. That way if you were to do .map it would not error.
Use selectors to retrieve the list of groups and if someObject.groups is null return an empty array.
You can see an example of how I did this in a small test app. Have a look at specifically:
/src/index.js for the initial dispatch
/src/redux/modules/characters.js for the use of thunks
/src/redux/selectors/characters.js for the population of the comics, series, etc. which are used in the CharacterDetails component

How can I iterate and call a function that updates every individual elements of a React state hash?

My React App has a state called googleAccounts which is initially empty:
getInitialState() {
return {
value: '',
googleAccounts: {}
};
},
I have a simple search bar. When a search is performed, the server communicates with Google's API to get a list of accounts for that search, then googleAccounts is populated with accounts. This works wonderfully and the accounts are displayed below the search bar as search results.
searchGoogleAccounts(e){
e.preventDefault();
Client.getGoogleAccounts(this.state.value, (accounts) => {
this.setState({googleAccounts: accounts});
});
},
Then I want to take each account and send it to the Atlassian API to see if the account exists in the Atlassian database. I made a function that takes the account name and if there is an Atlassian account for that name it returns that account in JSON. This function also works fine.
I'm just not sure how I should use this function to properly interact with the DOM. If there is an Atlassian account I want to display a checkmark. If there is not an account I want to display a button to make the Atlassian account. And while it's waiting for a response from the Atlassian API I want to display a loading icon.
I tried adding an atlassian property to each of the googleAccounts. The problem with this approach was that I had to update the entire googleAccounts each time I grabbed an atlassian account. So separate calls would update googleAccounts at the same time and overwrite each other's changes. I thought about altering the DOM directly within the function but I read that this is considered insecure. I am not sure what my best option is and any advice would be appreciated.
You can pass an updater function to setState instead.
this.setState((prevState, props) => {
return {
googleAccounts: {
...prevState.googleAccounts,
[someGoogleAcctId]: {
...prevState.googleAccounts[someGoogleAcctId],
atlassian: resultOfAPICall
}
}
};
});
This way you aren't accessing this.state in multiple API callbacks, and instead you're always receiving the currently up-to-date state before altering it. Your callbacks were probably overwriting each other's changes because they were starting from the same original state snapshot, instead of taking the existing state changes into account (which you can't do if you're not using the updater functions, since you don't have access to the intermediate states).

How to deal with query params in react + react-router + flux

I'm trying to replace a Backbone.Marionette App to React and am facing difficulty thinking about query params. I think I'm missing a really simple peace in understanding this pattern so I apologize if this question is totally nonsense. I would appreciate any support or just pointing me to some direction that I can google more specifically.
There's a /users page which lists users and you can filter the users via search bar. So if you want to filter the users which contain 'joe' in their username, I would make a request to the server with query params like /users?username=joe. In addition I am able to paginate by adding a page parameter, too (/users?username=joe&page=1).
If I only think about the functionality, the flow would probably be
The Client inserts joe to the input element and clicks Search.
Clicking the Search button fires an Action (like Action.getUser).
The Action makes a request to the server and receives the results
The Dispatcher dispatches a function with the results payload to whomever (usually the Store) is interested in the Action.
The Store's state changes with the new result received by the Action
The View (Component) re-renders by listening to the Store's change.
and it works as expected. However, I would like the Client to be able to bookmark the current filtered result and be able to come back to the same page some time later. This means I will need somewhere to save explicit information about the search term the Client made, which is usually the url (am I right?). So I will need to update the url with query parameters to save the search term (/users?username=joe&page=1).
What I'm confused is where and when to update the url? What I can come up with right now are the 2 options below - and they don't seem to be clean at all.
Option 1
The Client inserts joe to the input element and clicks Search.
Clicking the Search button fires a transition of the ReactRouter with the new query params (/users?username=joe&page=1).
The View (Component) receives the new params via this.props.params and this.props.query.
The View (Component) fires an Action like Action.getUser depending on the query params it receives - in this case username=joe&page=1.
after this, it is the same as above
Option 2 (only 6 is different from what I explained above)
The Client inserts joe to the input element and clicks Search.
Clicking the Search button fires an Action (like Action.getUser).
The Action makes a request to the server and receives the results
The Dispatcher dispatches a function with the results payload to whomever (usually the Store) is interested in the Action.
The Store's state changes with the new result received by the Action
The View (Component) re-renders by listening to the Store's change. And somehow (I don't know how, yet) updates its url depending on its props (like this.props.searchusername, and this.props.searchpage)
What is the best practice on handling query params? (or this may not be specific to query params)
Am I completely misunderstanding the design pattern or architecture? Thanks in advance for any support.
Some articles I've read
Any way to get current params or current query from router (outside of component)?
Async data and Flux stores
Make it easier to add query parameters
React Router and Arbitrary Query Params: Page Refreshes Unintentionally on Load?
Add default params?
I would consider best practice to be the submit button only setting the location query (username). The rest should be taken care by the main react component that is assigned as router component. By this, you can be sure that anytime one revisits or shares the url, they can get the same results. And this is very generic too.
Something like this:
let myQuery = this.props.location.query;
if (myQuery.username) {
let theUser = myQuery.username;
this.setState({
userName = myQuery.username
});
} else {
this.setState({
userName = false //Show All
});
}
And then use this state "userName" to send to the server to search with. By this way, you will not need to iterate the code of the component that takes care of listing users since server already sends the relevant data.
In my experience with using location queries in React, I have been very content with their reactivity cycles and performance. I'd highly recommend keeping every different app state in relevance with the url.
Not entirely sure what you mean by
this means I will need to update the url to save the information (/users?username=joe&page=1).
You will probably have a similar structure to this.
TopContainer.jsx
-- Users.jsx
-- a list of User.jsx
Usually TopContainer will watch all the stores and if anything changed, pass it down to users.jsx. That way in Users.jsx, you can simply render this.props.users without worrying about any reRendering.
The search users actions usually happens in TopContainer's componentWillMount event, and you the page will listen to UserStore. That's a good place to throw in any query params. Something like this would work
componentWillUnmount() {
let searchTerm = router.getCurrentQuery().searchTerm;
UserActions.searchUsers(searchTerm)
},
The page doesn't really care if the url has a query params or not, it just dumbly shows whatever in the user store.
Then when the search finishes, Users.jsx will be reloaded and show the correct results

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