cerebral-react-baobab

A Cerebral package with React and Baobab

WARNING!

This package uses the DEV version of Baboab V2, which will soon be released.

Requirements

It is required that you use a Webpack or Browserify setup. Read more at The ultimate webpack setup for an example.

Debugger

You can download the Chrome debugger here.

More info on Cerebral and video introduction

Cerebral main repo is located here and a video demonstration can be found here.

Video introduction

Watch a video on how you can use this package. Note! Video is for the cerebral-react-immutable-store, just ignore the immutable-store specific stuff ;-)

Install

npm install cerebral-react-baobab

API

All examples are shown with ES6 syntax.

Instantiate a Cerebral controller

controller.js

import Controller from 'cerebral-react-baobab';
import request from 'superagent';
 
// The initial state of the application
const state = {
  isLoading: false,
  user: null,
  error: null
};
 
// Any default input you want each action to receive
const defaultInput = {
  utils: {
    request: request
  }
};
 
// Baobab options
const options = {
  validate: function () {}
};
 
// Instantiate the controller
export default Controller(state, defaultInput, options);

main.js

import React from 'react';
import AppComponent from './AppComponent.js';
import controller from './controller.js';
 
React.render(controller.injectInto(AppComponent), document.body);

With Baobab you can also use facets. Read more about that here.

Creating signals

Creating actions are generic. It works the same way across all packages. Please read about actions at the Cerebral Repo - Actions. You can also watch a video on signals to get an overview of how it works.

Typically you would create your signals in the main.js file, but you can split them out as you see fit.

main.js

import React from 'react';
import AppComponent from './AppComponent.js';
import controller from './controller.js';
 
import setLoading from './actions/setLoading.js';
import saveForm from './actions/saveForm.js';
import unsetLoading from './actions/unsetLoading.js';
 
controller.signal('formSubmitted', setLoading, [saveForm], unsetLoading);
 
React.render(controller.injectInto(AppComponent), document.body);

Get state in components

Decorator

import React from 'react';
import {Decorator as Cerebral} from 'cerebral-react-baobab';
 
@Cerebral({
  isLoading: ['isLoading'],
  user: ['user'],
  error: ['error']  
})
class App extends React.Component {
  componentDidMount() {
    this.props.signals.appMounted();
  }
  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        {this.props.isLoading ? 'Loading...' : 'hello ' + this.props.user.name}
        {this.props.error ? this.props.error : null}
      </div>
    );
  }
}

Higher Order Component

import React from 'react';
import {HOC} from 'cerebral-react-baobab';
 
class App extends React.Component {
  componentDidMount() {
    this.props.signals.appMounted();
  }
  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        {this.props.isLoading ? 'Loading...' : 'hello ' + this.props.user.name}
        {this.props.error ? this.props.error : null}
      </div>
    );
  }
}
 
App = HOC(App, {
  isLoading: ['isLoading'],
  user: ['user'],
  error: ['error']  
});

Mixin

import React from 'react';
import {Mixin} from 'cerebral-react-baobab';
 
const App = React.createClass({
  mixins: [Mixin],
  getStatePaths() {
    return {
      isLoading: ['isLoading'],
      user: ['user'],
      error: ['error']  
    };
  },
  componentDidMount() {
    this.props.signals.appMounted();
  },
  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        {this.state.isLoading ? 'Loading...' : 'hello ' + this.state.user.name}
        {this.state.error ? this.state.error : null}
      </div>
    );
  }
});

Recording

import React from 'react';
import {Decorator as Cerebral} from 'cerebral-react-baobab';
 
@Cerebral()
class App extends React.Component {
  record() {
    this.props.recorder.record();
  }
  record() {
    this.props.recorder.stop();
  }
  play() {
    this.props.recorder.seek(0, true);
  }
  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        <button onClick={() => this.record()}>Record</button>
        <button onClick={() => this.stop()}>Stop</button>
        <button onClick={() => this.play()}>Play</button>
      </div>
    );
  }
}

Listening to changes

You can manually listen to changes on the controller, in case you want to explore reactive-router for example.

main.js

...
const onChange = function (state) {
  state // New state
};
controller.eventEmitter.on('change', onChange);
controller.eventEmitter.removeListener('change', onChange);

Listening to errors

You can listen to errors in the controller. Now, Cerebral helps you a lot to avoid errors, but there are probably scenarios you did not consider. By using the error event you can indicate messages to the user and pass these detailed error messages to a backend service. This lets you quickly fix bugs in production.

main.js

...
const onError = function (error) {
  controller.signals.errorOccured({error: error.message});
  myErrorService.post(error);
};
controller.eventEmitter.on('error', onError);