Entman

A library to help you manage your entities in a redux store when using normalizr. Entman takes care of retrieving them from the store and creating, deleting and updating the entities while keeping the relations between them in sync.

The idea is that everything that has a model in the backend should be an entity in the frontend. The management of entities is usually something very straightforward but tedious, so you leave this work to entman and you can focus on the rest.

Install

Install it as a node module as usual with npm along its peer dependencies:

$ npm install -S entman redux normalizr

Or using yarn:

$ yarn add entman redux normalizr

Example

A quick example to see entman in action:

schemas.js

We use schemas to define relationships between our entities. We can also define methods that will be available in the entity and serve like some sort of computed property.

import { defineSchema, hasMany, generateSchemas } from 'entman';
 
const Group = defineSchema('Group', {
  attributes: {
    users: hasMany('User'),  // Use the name of another model to define relationships
 
    getNumberOfUsers() {  // Define methods that interact with the entity instance
      return this.users.length;
    }
  }
});
 
const User = defineSchema('User', {
  attributes: {
    group: 'Group',
  }
});
 
// Generate and export the schemas. Schemas will be exported as an object
// with the name of every schema as the keys and the actual schemas as values.
export default generateSchemas([
  Group,
  User,
])

reducer.js

Connect the entities reducer to the state.

import { combineReducers } from 'redux';
import { reducer as entities } from 'entman';
import schemas from './schemas';
 
export default combineReducers({
  // Other reducers,
  entities: entities(schemas, {
    // An initial state can also be specified
    Group: {
      1: { id: 1 },
    },
  }),
})

store.js

Connect the entman middleware to the store.

import { createStore, applyMiddleware } from 'redux';
import { middleware as entman } from 'entman';
import reducer from './reducer';
 
export default createStore(
  store,
  applyMiddleware(entman({ enableBatching: true })),
);

selectors.js

Create selectors that will retrieve the entities from the store. Selectors also take care of populating relationships and adding the getter methods defined in the schema. It's recommended to wrap entman selectors intead of using them directly so they're abstracted from the rest of the system.

import { getEntity } from 'entman';
import schemas from './schemas';
 
export function getGroup(state, id) {
  return getEntity(state, schemas.Group, id);
}

actions.js

Create some actions using the helpers from entman. The helpers will take an action and wrap it with entman functionality. This way, you can still react in your reducers to your own actions and the entity management is just a side effect that entman will take care of.

import {
  createEntities,
} from 'entman';
import schemas from './schemas';
 
export const CREATE_USER = 'CREATE_USER';
 
export function createUser(user) {
  return createEntities(schemas.User, 'payload.user', {
    type: CREATE_USER,  // CREATE_USER action will be dispatched alongside entman actions
    payload: { user },
  });
}

Group.jsx

Finally, use your actions and selectors like you would normally do.

import React from 'react';
import { connect } from 'react-redux';
import { getGroup } from './selectors';
import { loadGroup, createUser } from './actions';
 
class Group extends React.Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);
    this._handleInput = this._handleInput.bind(this);
    this._handleAddUser = this._handleAddUser.bind(this);
  }
 
  componentDidMount() {
    const { loadGroup, params } = this.props;
    loadGroup(params.groupId);
  }
 
  render() {
    const { group } = this.props;
    return (
      <div>
        <h1>{group.name}</h1>
        <h2>{group.getNumberOfUsers()} members</h2>
        <ul>
          {group.users.map(u => (
            <li>{u.name}</li>
          ))}
        </ul>
        {this.state.showForm &&
          this._renderUserForm()
        }
        { ! this.state.showForm &&
          <button type="button" onClick={() => this.setState({ showForm: true })}>
            Add
          </button>
        }
      </div>
    );
  }
 
  _renderUserForm() {
    return (
      <div>
        <input type="text" onChange={this._handleInput} />
        <button type="button" onClick={() => this.setState({ showForm: false })}>
          Cancel
        </button>
        <button type="button" onClick={this._handleAddUser}>Save</button>
      </div>
    );
  }
 
  _handleInput(e) {
    this.setState({ name: e.target.value });
  }
 
  _handleAddUser(e) {
    const { group, createUser } = this.props;
    const { name } = this.state;
    const user = { name, group: group.id };
    createUser(user);
  }
}
 
const mapStateToProps = (state, ownProps) => ({
  group: getGroup(state, ownProps.params.groupId),
});
 
const mapDispatchToProps = {
  loadGroup,
  createUser,
};
 
export default connect(mapStateToProps, mapDispatchToProps)(Group);

API

See the API Reference

LICENSE

MIT. See LICENSE for details.