React Alt Calling a store method synchronously - javascript

Developing a React/Alt application, I face a quite common scenario:
In the root component, in a button click handler, I need to check if a value in a specific store is valid before triggering an action. This value is not yet available in the state of the store since it has to be calculated.
So I have to call an action linked on the method of the store which going to calculate the value. The result will be stored in the state of the store and will be available in the listen-handler of the root component.
Unfortunately, in this case, I lose the initial context of the user action.
I'd like to synchronously calculate the value and retrieve it in the same context. Is there a way to do it? What are the best practices in such a scenario?
Thanks.

You can split your validation logic up into a separate module. On the onClick handler you can then execute this validation logic, using either store.getState() or the props of your component. The validation logic will then be separate from your component, which makes it easy to test and re-use, plus it won't clutter your component, which should be more concerned with behavior of the interface.

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Standard component interaction mechanisms vs Vuex - how to combine them?

The question is probably more theoretical.
I have little experience with Vue and am trying to figure out where my knowledge gaps are and fill them.
There are standard mechanisms for interaction between components:
from top to bottom - input parameters (props) are passed from parent components to child components
from bottom to top - events are thrown from child to parent
And on the other hand, there is VUEX with its own data storage, which is, roughly speaking, a global variable object with a set of methods for working with it.
Data from this storage is available at any time to any component. And it turns out that the use of Vuex seems to make the standard interaction mechanisms of components completely unnecessary.
Well, perhaps, the generation of events is still needed so that one component can quickly make it clear to the other about the completed action, events, etc.
The question is, does Vuex generally override the standard component interactions?
If it is not, how should it be combined in the right way?
I'll try to answer your question.
Vuex will be very usefull to store data that you'll need in a part of the application or globally, like user data.
If you can simply use $emit or props use it, it will be better and simple to understand the code, because it will be overkill to use the store just for "a prop".
So, you will use Vuex in your component to call an action and fetch / store some data you will need in a another view out of your children/parents context.
I don't know if my explanations are well haha, I tried :)

Incrementing variable in action creator

I was recently watching Dan Abramov redux series and one episode got me really curios. In this episode - Redux: Extracting Action Creators, timecode: 00:32~1:32 he's making action creator as a separate function (like it would normally look in the typical redux application) because:
... However, what if another component wants to dispatch the add todo
action? It would need to have the access to next todo ID somehow
But is that actually making any sense? In that particular example, nextTodoId variable (which is always incrementing) is available to all components inside that jsbin even if we don't extract action creator into a function.
Even if we'll imagine that it will be in a separate file (action creator), on each import that variable will be equal to the initial value (0) which breaks it's uniqueness concept.
So, what does he meant by that? How is that approach (of making action creators as a separate functions) will guarantee us the acccess to that next todo id variable?
You're focusing on the wrong aspect. It's a fair enough point that this is a terrible way to store "current ID", but that isn't the purpose of the refactor he is showing.
The real purpose is that Components should be as agnostic about their context as possible. A Component trying to "addTodo" really shouldn't be concerned with "what is the current max todo ID?".
In contrast, the actionCreator is concerned with this aspect. It takes in data from the components and is then responsible for translating it to a dispatchable call that has real value.

Flux calling actions with arguments managed in store

Say I have an action someAction(params) that takes params which is managed in a store paramsStore:
paramsStore.listen(function(params) {
someAction(params)
})
It seems that I can't just call this in my view because apparently this goes against the Flux way of doing things (actions shouldn't be called within store listeners).
The reason I have someAction inside the store listener, is because I want it to be called every time the paramsStore is modified. How can I achieved this without resorting to the 'unpattern' of calling actions within stores listener?
The right "flux way" of doing it would be to call the someAction(params) wherever information is dispatched to paramsStore.
Understanding what someAction does will give more clarity. Does it really need to be an action? If you're just doing some manipulation in the store data, you could have it as a local method in the paramStore.
While I am new to flux as well I could offer a suggestion. State that is needed to determine the outcome of an action that is held by Store A could be attached to a get method. This state can be retrieved by a View with a getter. When the action is called this state can be sent as a parameter. If something needs to be async it can now be done here (ajax call or something else) based on what the state is. Either the result of this or a promise object can then be used to trigger an action which is passed to the dispatcher. The dispatcher sends the result or promise to the store. The store then updates its state and the process repeats as necessary (when initial action is triggered).
I think a little more detail of what exactly you need would help actually. I do believe listening for for an action and triggering another action inside the store doesn't coincide with flux. I do think there is likely a way to accomplish the actual result you want using flux but without more detail this is the best I could come up with. Also, in reality you can implement anything you want. Flux is just a model and by extension a self imposed constraint to help with structure.
If you are using Flux as is, you could refer to the original image of the whole architecture at https://github.com/facebook/flux.
As you can see not only views could create actions. There are also Web API Utils which could create ones. Generally speaking not only API utils can do this. It's totally okey to create actions in order to start some behaviour according to outside world, some services or something else.
But in your case you are trying to create an action on some store update listener. As far as I can understand this would result in some changes in one or few other stores. In this case you probably don't need to create an action in the listener, but rather create some relations between your stores with waitFor API. Here is a link with detailed information: http://facebook.github.io/flux/docs/todo-list.html#adding-dependency-management-to-the-dispatcher.

How to pass a prop to every component in react.js?

I'm setting up a site using react.js. the client receives a massive json through ajax that is then used to populate all the necessary fields, graphs, etc. Seeing as this json will cover pretty much all the information contained on the site, it has be accesible in almost every single component. Is there a clean way to pass it to every last component (and there are a lot of them)? Passing it the regular way to ~70 components seems dirty and inefficient.
As React's documentation states, you could have components communicate by integrate a global event system, and then subscribe to an application-data event from all your components, in componentDidMount().
This way, each time you will emit the application-data event from within the code responsible for pulling the website data, all components will receive that data. At that point, you can call setState().
Please be careful and unbind the events once a component goes "out of scope", inside componentWillUnmount().
Failing to do so will result in memory leaks, as you will have the event handler dangling, and it will be called each time you pull the website data, even if your Component's instance has been removed from the DOM.
You could also try to make your components pull data by themselves, as sending a huge JSON around, is not the best solution. I mean, each component should use the data it needs, in order to work, not the whole website data. The way I would alter this would be by parsing the JSON object and storing it for reference in a variable, on a scope that is accessible to all components, and use the event system to only notify the components that the data is ready, and each component would go to the global data object and get their data.
Example(pseudo-code):
XHR.getData
XHR.onReadyState => GlobalNameSpace.data = data
EventSystem.PUBLISH('application-data')
// component code
Component {
EventSystem.SUBSCRIBE('application-data') =>
dataNeededForInit = GlobalNameSpace.data.componentXData
}
Reference: https://facebook.github.io/react/tips/communicate-between-components.html
Context might fit the bill. It might not be particularly tidy solution but perhaps that would be a starting point for you.

ReactJs: How to pass the initial state while rendering a component?

I know I can pass props while rendering a component. I'm also aware of the getInitialState method. But the problem is, getInitialState isn't quite helping because my component doesn't know it's initial state. I do. So I want to pass it while I'm rendering it.
Something like this (pseudo-code):
React.render(<Component initialState={...} />);
I know I could use a prop to work as the initial state but this smells like an anti-pattern.
What should I do?
EDIT FOR CLARITY
Imagine I have a CommentList component. By the time I first render it, the initial state corresponds to the snapshot of current comments from my database. As the user includes comments, this list will change, and that's why it should be a state and not props. Now, in order to render the initial snapshot of comments I should pass it to the CommentsList component, because it has no way to know it. My confusion is that the only way I see to pass this information is through a props which seems to be an anti-pattern.
Disclaimer: Newer versions of React handle this on a different way.
Only permanent components might be able to use props in the getInitialState. Props in getInitialState is an anti-pattern if synchronization is your goal. getInitialState is only called when the component is first created so it may raise some bugs because the source of truth is not unique. Check this answer.
Quoting documentation:
Using props, passed down from parent, to generate state in
getInitialState often leads to duplication of "source of truth", i.e.
where the real data is. Whenever possible, compute values on-the-fly
to ensure that they don't get out of sync later on and cause
maintenance trouble
You can still do:
getInitialState: function() {
return {foo: this.props.foo}
}
As they will be the default props for your app. But as long as you are using a prop to set a value that presumably won't change, you can use the same prop inside of the render function.
<span>{this.props.foo}</span>
This props won't be modified, so no problem using it each time the render is called.
Edited answer:
In this case your initial state should not be a prop, should be an ajax call which populates the comment list.
To quote the React docs:
Using props, passed down from parent, to generate state in getInitialState often leads to duplication of "source of truth", i.e. where the real data is. Whenever possible, compute values on-the-fly to ensure that they don't get out of sync later on and cause maintenance trouble
And:
However, it's not an anti-pattern if you make it clear that synchronization's not the goal here
So if your props include a value and an initialValue, then it's clear that the latter is for initialization, and there's no confusion.
See the React docs for code examples.
If you know the state then I would tend to argue that the component you are rendering is not really in control of it. The idea in React is that any particular piece of state lives in only a single location.
After seeing the other answers, and studying a little bit about it, I've come to this conclusion:
If you are rendering React in the client (compiled or not), which is the default approach, you should try to make an extra Ajax call from inside your component to get the initial state. That is, don't use props. It's cleaner and less error prone.
However, if you are rendering in the server (Node.js or ReactJs.NET), there's no reason to make this extra Ajax call for each request.. Besides, it's not SEO friendly. You want the complete page to come as the result of your request (including data). So, as #RandyMorris pointed out, in this case it's ok to use props as the initial state, as long as it's exclusively the initial state. That is, no synchronization.

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