Gambit

Example App | Guide

Gambit is a hyper-thin library designed to make building API driven apps with Redux/React easier. It is not a Redux replacement, it is a library built on top of Redux.

npm install gambit

Or check out the example app

Changelog

3.1.0

• Introduction of cycleIds
• Introduction of quickMethods
• Introduction of propTransform
• Introduction of dependableMatrix

3.0.0

• Introduction of the ability to pass options to GeneralConstants

2.0.0

• Better react error messages

1.2.0

• logging: true in reducer options now outputs a lot of information to console from your reducers
• strictMode: true in reducer options prevents a lot of dumb mistakes: state.user.set("1", { name: 'Mark' }) will warn you that 1 is a string.
• Added a constant GeneralConstants.MONITORED_VALUE_CHANGED to allow for hooking in to contained components with debugging components
• Using reactErrorPatch.js which shims render in React to make debugging of errors much easier.

Upgrading to v3.* from v2.*

gambitReducer is now a function that takes reducer options as it's first paramere

import { gambitReducer } from 'gambit';

configureStore({ myReducer, gambitReducer });

Is now

import { gambitReducer } from 'gambit';

configureStore({ myReducer, gambit: gambitReducer({ resetAction: 'LOGOUT' }) });

Upgrading to v2.* from v1.*

You need to polyfill Proxy.

Upgrading to v1.* from v0.*

There is a breaking change in v1.0 surrounding actionBlockers (hasNotBeenCalled and hasNotBeenCalledIn).

Previously hasNotBeenCalled would only update when an action successfully returned. This meant if you had multiple containers using the same action being loaded at the same time, they would all fire. Now the behaviour of hasNotBeenCalled and hasNotBeenCalledIn has nothing to do with success of the call, they will block an action if it has been fired at all.

The previous behaviour (only blocking on success) is now available with actionBlockers hasNotSucceeded and hasNotSucceededIn.

You can simply replace:

fetch: {
  as: state => state.user.get('favourites'),
  grab: dispatch => asVal => dispatch(getFavourites({}, hasNotBeenCalled)),
}

with

fetch: {
  as: state => state.user.get('favourites'),
  grab: dispatch => asVal => dispatch(getFavourites({}, hasNotSucceeded)),
}

Why?

Redux is a fantastic tool for managing state within a javascript application, however it is naturally a low-level interface. This is great but when building API driven applications, it can become quite boilerplate intensive and the APIs for connecting a component to a store and then fetching data can lead to quite a lot of repetition.

The whole beauty of a library like Gambit is that it's just a set of helpers on top of an existing library. You're still using redux underneath, so if Gambit is too prescriptive for a particular edge case, you can just go back to vanilla Redux that one time. It's not sugar - more like icing.

An Actual Developer

What does it do?

Gambit provides a very simple way to create container components that need to interact with an API. It does so in a way that uses the power of the redux store whilst allowing you to build remote-data-dependent UIs quicker.

Because it's built on Redux, you can still use the entire Redux ecosystem alongside it whether that's react-router-redux or redux-dev-tools etc.

Give me an example, you idiot!

Okay okay, keep your hair on. Check out the example app. Alternatively, here's a quick example of something Gambit does very well, creating Container components.

const AllUsersListContainer = export createContainer(AllUsersList, {
  fetch: {
    allUsers: {
      as: (state) => state.users.allUsers,
      grab: (dispatch) => asValue => {
        if (asValue.length === 0) return dispatch(getAllUsers());
      }
    },
  },
  pending() {
    return <LoadingSpinner />;
  },
  failed() {
    return <ErrorPage error="Fetching all users failed" />;
  },
});

You don't have to deal with @connect, mapStateToProps, componentWill... or any other life-cycle hooks. The container will getAllUsers when the Redux store has none and whilst doing it will display a loading spinner. If it fails then you'll get a helpful error page.

It'll also deal with when you're Component needs to create actions:

const AddUserButtonContainer = export createContainer(AddUserButton, {
  methods: {
    addUsers: dispatch => userId => dispatch(addUser({ userId })),
  }
});
 
// AddUserButton.js
function AddUserButton({ userId, addUser }) {
  return (
    <Button onClick={() => addUser({ userId })}>Add User</Button>
  );
}

What about Redux?

Gambit is built on top of Redux so it's setup requires creating a Redux store and it uses Redux behind the scenes. This leaves you free to continue to use all Redux plugins (react-router-redux, redux-dev-tools etc) whilst not having to deal with manually connecting everything to the store.

What Else?

Gambit provides a number of other helper libraries to make creating ActionCreators, Constants and Reducers much easier and boilerplate free.

Check out the guide.

ActionCreators

If you're fetching data from an API, you'll usually want your action creator to let you know when three things happen:

• When the data is requested
• When the fetch succeeds
• When the fetch fails

This allows you to build UIs that actually feel good for the user. This is all baked in to the Gambit ActionCreator flow and is as simple as:

import Constants from './constants';
import { createStagedAction } from 'gambit';
 
export const getAllUsers = createStagedAction(
  Constants.GET_ALL_USERS,
  api => api.users.getAllUsers()
);

When you call dispatch(getAllUsers()) from somewhere in your app (presumably a container component), api.users.getAllUsers is called and you can add in reducer updates for GET_ALL_USERS_STARTING, GET_ALL_USERS_DONE and GET_ALL_USERS_FAILED. You'll also receive any arguments that were passed to the dispatch.

Reducers

Creating reducers with Gambit is very easy and doesn't need a lot of switching. To change state based on the action above for instance we may create a reducer that looks like this:

import { createReducer } from 'gambit';
import Constants from './constants';
 
export default createReducer({
  allUsers: [[], {
    [Constants.GET_ALL_USERS_DONE]: ({
      body: { users }
    }, previousState) => [ ...previousState, ...users ],
  }],
});

What's more, because Gambit is creating Redux reducers, they sit happily alongside other redux reducers.

import { routerReducer } from 'react-router-redux';
import userReducer from './reducers/user.js';
import { createStore, combineReducers } from 'redux';
 
export default createStore(
  combineReducers({ users: userReducer, routing: routerReducer })
);

Creating Constants

Gambit provides a helper function to create all of the required constants for staged actions (DONE, STARTING etc).

import { createConstants } from 'gambit';
 
export default createConstants(['GET_ALL_USERS']);

Middleware

Setting up Gambit to use an API is very simple:

import React from 'react';
import { routerReducer } from 'react-router-redux';
import userReducer from './reducers/user.js';
import { createStore, combineReducers, compose, applyMiddleware } from 'redux';
import { GambitApi, createMiddleware } from 'gambit';
import { Provider } from 'react-redux';
import myApi from './api';
 
// Create react-router-redux middleware here
const gambitMiddleware = createMiddleware(myApi);
const store = createStore(
  combineReducers({ user: userReducer, routing: routerReducer }),
  {},
  compose(applyMiddleware(routerMiddleware, gambitMiddleware)),
);
 
class App extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <Provider store={store}>
        ...your application that is now connected to an API
      </Provider>
    )
  }
}
render(<App />, document.getElementById('coolSite'));

These Docs Suck

I know. I'll be updating them with a link to a more thorough guide and API documentation soon. Possibly even some screencasts.

Thanks

I'd like to thank the following people:

• Paolo Moretti - A really good programmer and bloke
• James Hollingworth - Creator of MartyJS from which a lot of the Gambit API takes inspiration
• Jim O'Brien - Helped with API design suggestions.
• Dan Abramov - Created Redux which powers these whole shenanigans.