@normy/react-query

react-query integration with normy - automatic normalization and data updates for data fetching libraries

Note

The newest version supports react-query: 5 and trpc: 11! If you still use older versions, you must use @normy/react-query@0.10.2

Table of content

• Introduction
• Motivation
• Installation
• Basic usage
• Disabling of normalization per query and mutation
• Optimistic updates
• useQueryNormalizer and manual updates
• getObjectById and getQueryFragment
• Garbage collection
• Clearing and unsubscribing from updates
• Structural sharing
• Examples

Introduction ⬆️

This is the official react-query integration with normy, a library, which allows your application data to be normalized automatically. This documentation will cover only react-query specifics, so if you did not already do that, you can find normy documentation here.

Motivation ⬆️

In order to understand what @normy/react-query actually does, it is the best to see an example:

  import React from 'react';
  import {
    QueryClientProvider,
    QueryClient,
    useQueryClient,
  } from '@tanstack/react-query';
+ import { QueryNormalizerProvider } from '@normy/react-query';

  const queryClient = new QueryClient();

  const Books = () => {
    const queryClient = useQueryClient();

    const { data: booksData = [] } = useQuery(['books'], () =>
      Promise.resolve([
        { id: '1', name: 'Name 1', author: { id: '1001', name: 'User1' } },
        { id: '2', name: 'Name 2', author: { id: '1002', name: 'User2' } },
      ]),
    );

    const { data: bookData } = useQuery(['book'], () =>
      Promise.resolve({
        id: '1',
        name: 'Name 1',
        author: { id: '1001', name: 'User1' },
      }),
    );

    const updateBookNameMutation = useMutation({
      mutationFn: () => ({
        id: '1',
        name: 'Name 1 Updated',
      }),
-     onSuccess: mutationData => {
-       queryClient.setQueryData(['books'], data =>
-         data.map(book =>
-           book.id === mutationData.id ? { ...book, ...mutationData } : book,
-         ),
-       );
-       queryClient.setQueryData(['book'], data =>
-         data.id === mutationData.id ? { ...data, ...mutationData } : data,
-       );
-     },
    });

    const updateBookAuthorMutation = useMutation({
      mutationFn: () => ({
        id: '1',
        author: { id: '1004', name: 'User4' },
      }),
-     onSuccess: mutationData => {
-       queryClient.setQueryData(['books'], data =>
-         data.map(book =>
-           book.id === mutationData.id ? { ...book, ...mutationData } : book,
-         ),
-       );
-       queryClient.setQueryData(['book'], data =>
-         data.id === mutationData.id ? { ...data, ...mutationData } : data,
-       );
-     },
    });

    const addBookMutation = useMutation({
      mutationFn: () => ({
        id: '3',
        name: 'Name 3',
        author: { id: '1003', name: 'User3' },
      }),
      // with data with top level arrays, you still need to update data manually
      onSuccess: mutationData => {
        queryClient.setQueryData(['books'], data => data.concat(mutationData));
      },
    });

    // return some JSX
  };

  const App = () => (
+   <QueryNormalizerProvider queryClient={queryClient}>
      <QueryClientProvider client={queryClient}>
        <Books />
      </QueryClientProvider>
+   </QueryNormalizerProvider>
  );

So, as you can see, apart from top level arrays, no manual data updates are necessary anymore. This is especially handy if a given mutation should update data for multiple queries. Not only this is verbose to do updates manually, but also you need to exactly know, which queries to update. The more queries you have, the bigger advantages normy brings.

Installation ⬆️

To install the package, just run:

$ npm install @normy/react-query

or you can just use CDN: https://unpkg.com/@normy/react-query.

You do not need to install @normy/core, because it will be installed as @normy/react-query direct dependency.

Basic usage ⬆️

For the basic usage, see Motivation paragraph. The only thing which you need to actually do is to pass queryClient to QueryNormalizerProvider. After doing this, you can use react-query as you normally do, but you don't need to make any data updates most of the time anymore.

QueryNormalizerProvider accepts two props:

• queryClient - this is just a react-query instance you create by new QueryClient(config),
• normalizerConfig - this is normy config, which you might need to meet requirements for data normalization to work - see explanation for more details. Additionally to normy config, you can also pass normalize option, which is true by default - if you pass false, nothing will be normalized unless explicitely set (see the next paragraph)

Disabling of normalization per query and mutation ⬆️

By default all your queries and mutations will be normalized. That means that for each query there will be normalized representation of its data and for each mutation its response data will be read and all dependent normalized queries will be updated.

However, it does not always make sense to normalize all data. You might want to disable data normalization, for example for performance reason for some extreme big queries, or just if you do not need it for a given query, for instance if a query data will be never updated.

Anyway, you might want to change this globally by passing normalize: false to QueryNormalizerProvider:

<QueryNormalizerProvider
  queryClient={queryClient}
  normalizerConfig={{ normalize: false }}
>
  {children}
</QueryNormalizerProvider>

Then, you may override the global default normalize setting per query and mutation. For this, you can use meta option, for example for useQuery:

useQuery(['query-key'], loadData, {
  meta: {
    normalize: true,
  },
});

or for useMutation:

useMutation({
  mutationFn,
  meta: {
    normalize: true,
  },
});

Similarly, you can have normalize: true set globally (default), but you could disable normalization for a specific query or a mutation, for example:

useQuery(['query-key'], loadData, {
  meta: {
    normalize: false,
  },
});

Optimistic updates ⬆️

For normal mutations there is nothing you need to do, normy will inspect response data, calculate dependent queries, update normalized data and update all relevant queries. With optimistic updates though, you need to prepare optimistic data yourself:

useMutation({
  mutationFn: async () => {
    return {
      id: '1',
      name: 'Name updated',
    };
  },
  onMutate: () => {
    return {
      optimisticData: {
        id: '1',
        name: 'Name updated',
      },
      rollbackData: {
        id: '1',
        name: 'Name',
      },
    };
  },
});

The above code will immediately update all queries which have object with id: 1 in their data. In case of a mutation error, data will be reverted to original rollbackData.

It will work at the same time as a normal mutation too, so on mutation success, all dependent queries will be updated again. If you are sure about the response structure, you might want to disable normalization for this mutation, so that on successful response the normalization won't be repeated unnecessarily:

useMutation({
  mutationFn: async () => {
    return {
      id: '1',
      name: 'Name updated',
    };
  },
  onMutate: () => {
    return {
      optimisticData: {
        id: '1',
        name: 'Name updated',
      },
      rollbackData: {
        id: '1',
        name: 'Name',
      },
    };
  },
  meta: {
    normalize: false,
  },
});

useQueryNormalizer and manual updates ⬆️

Sometimes you might need to update your data manually, without having API response. One of examples could be having a websocket event that an object name has been changed. Now, instead of manually updating all your relevant queries, instead you could do below:

import { useQueryNormalizer } from '@normy/react-query';

const SomeComponent = () => {
  const queryNormalizer = useQueryNormalizer();

  return (
    <button
      onClick={() =>
        queryNormalizer.setNormalizedData({ id: '1', name: 'Updated name' })
      }
    >
      Update user
    </button>
  );
};

What it will do is updating normalized store, as well as finding all queries which contain user with id equal '1' and updating them with name: 'Updated name'.

getObjectById and getQueryFragment ⬆️

Sometimes it is useful to get an object from normalized store by id. You do not even need to know in which query/queries this object could be, all you need is an id. For example, you might want to get it just to display it. An even more interesting example is that you could use it as initialData or placeholderData for another useQuery, so that you could render some data before even query is fetched:

import { useQueryNormalizer } from '@normy/react-query';

const BookDetail = ({ bookId }) => {
  const queryNormalizer = useQueryNormalizer();
  const bookPlaceholder = queryNormalizer.getObjectById(bookId);
  const query = useQuery({
    queryKey: ['books', bookId],
    placeholderData: bookPlaceholder,
    ...otherOptions,
  });

  //
};

In above example, imagine you want to display a component with a book detail. You might already have this book fetched from a book list query, so you would like to show something to your user before detail book query is even fetched. It is not even a problem that bookPlaceholder could have not complete data, for example you could have name but not description. placeholderData is perfect for this, and instead of showing just a spinner, you could also already show name for faster user experience.

And what if book with this id does not exist? No harm done, getObjectById will just return undefined, so the user will just wait for detail query to be finished as normally.

getObjectById and recursive relationships

Because getObjectById denormalizes an object with an id, you might get some issues with recursive relationships. Take below object:

const user = {
  id: '1',
  name: 'X',
  bestFriend: {
    id: '2',
    name: 'Y',
    bestFriend: {
      id: '1',
      name: 'X',
    },
  },
};

Typically normy saves data structure for each query automatically, so that query normalization and denormalization gives exactly the same results, even for above case. But getObjectById is different, as a given object could be present in multiple queries, with different attributes.

With above example, you will end up with infinite recursion error and getObjectById will just return undefined. You will also see a warning in the console, to use a second argument for this case, which tells getObjectById what structure is should have, for example:

import { useQueryNormalizer } from '@normy/react-query';

const queryNormalizer = useQueryNormalizer();
const user = queryNormalizer.getObjectById('1', {
  id: '',
  name: '',
  bestFriend: { id: '', name: '' },
});

In above case, user would be:

const user = {
  id: '1',
  name: 'X',
  bestFriend: {
    id: '2',
    name: 'Y',
  },
};

Notice that 2nd argument - data structure you pass - contains empty strings. Why? Because it does not matter what primitive values you will use there, only data type is important.

And now, for typescript users there is a gift - when you provide data structure as 2nd argument, getObjectById response will be properly typed, so in our user example user will have type:

type User = {
  id: string;
  name: string;
  bestFriend: { id: string; name: string };
};

So, passing optional 2nd argument has the following use cases:

• controlling structure of returned object, for example you might be interested only in { id: '', name: '' }
• preventing infinite recursions for relationships like friends
• having automatic Typescript type

getQueryFragment

getQueryFragment is a more powerful version of getObjectById, actually getObjectById uses getQueryFragment under the hood. Basically getQueryFragment allows you to get multiple objects in any data structure you need, for example:

import { getId } from '@normy/react-query';

const users = queryNormalizer.getQueryFragment([getId('1'), getId('2')]);
const usersAndBook = queryNormalizer.getQueryFragment({
  users: [getId('1'), getId('2')],
  book: getId('3'),
});

Notice we need to use getId helper, which transform id you pass into its internal format.

Anyway. if any object does not exist, it will be undefined. For example, assuming user with id 1 exists and 2 does not, users will be:

[
  {
    id: '1',
    name: 'Name 1',
  },
  undefined,
];

Like for getObjectById, you can also pass data structure, for example:

import { getId } from '@normy/react-query';

const usersAndBook = queryNormalizer.getQueryFragment(
  { users: [getId('1'), getId('2')], book: getId('3') },
  {
    users: [{ id: '', name: '' }],
    book: { id: '', name: '', author: '' },
  },
);

Notice that to define an array type, you just need to pass one item, even though we want to have two users. This is because we care only about data structure.

Garbage collection ⬆️

normy know how to clean after itself. When a query is removed from the store, normy will do the same, removing all redundant information.

Clearing and unsubscribing from updates ⬆️

When QueryNormalizerProvider is unmounted, all normalized data will be automatically cleared and all subscribers to react-query client will be unsubscribed.

Structural sharing ⬆️

By default, this library takes advantage over react-query structural sharing feature. Structural sharing benefit is the following - if a query is refetched, its data will remain referentially the same if it is the same structurally (when API response is the same).

Typically it was implemented in order to have optimizations like avoiding rerenders for the same data, but normy also takes advantage over it, namely, if a query was just refetched but its data is the same, normy will not unnecessarily normalize it (as it would normalize it to the same value it has now anyway).

This brings big performance improvements, especially during refetches on window refocus (if you use this feature), as then potentially dozens of queries could be refetched simultaneously. In practice, most of those responses will be the same, which will prevent data to be normalized again unnecessarily (to the very same normalized value).

So it is even more beneficial not to turn off react-query structural sharing feature!

Examples ⬆️

I highly recommend to try examples how this package could be used in real applications.

There are following examples currently:

• react-query
• trpc

Licence ⬆️

MIT