react-async-actions

A simple way to handle asynchronous action dependencies in React components, in apps which use a global state container (e.g. Redux/Mobx/Flux), on client and server.

This library attempts to be as non-obtrusive as possible, providing a simple helper function for server-rendering, to allow the server to wait for all async actions to resolve before calling renderToString, and a decorator to use on components which depend on actions.

• Should I use this library?
• The Problem
• Client-side
• Server-side
• How it works
  • On the client
  • On the server
• Installing
• Example Usage
  • Redux Example
  • MobX Example
• API

Should I use this library?

You might want to use this library if your app:

1. Renders React on the server (is *isomorphic/universal)
2. Has components with async data dependencies (e.g. component 'A' depends on some data from an API call before rendering content).
3. Uses some global state container (Redux, Mobx, Flux) - i.e. your application data's source of truth is not stored in component state

The Problem

In React, it's very common for components to depend on some data from async actions before they can render.

Just to clarify, an action here is a fairly generic construct, not to be confused with a Redux action, which is just an object. It's more comparible to a MobX action - i.e. some function that sometimes fetches some data, and then sets some state, which React then uses to render component(s).

Actions can be asynchronous, OR synchronous. It could be a Redux action (creator), a MobX action, or any other action which sets state in a global state container.

Client-side

On the client this can be done fairly easily because of how React.render works. The actions simply get fired off when the component mounts, state is changed somewhere, and the app can keep re-rendering as state changes.

Server-side

However on the server the rendering scenario is completely different. The server needs to render only once to a string, then send that markup to the client as soon as possible.

So when a component needs to wait for some data from an async action, out of the box ReactDOM.renderToString will render the whole app to a html string, firing off any actions you might have in componentWillMount, then when the actions complete and modify the state, there's nothing to cause another re-render. Usually this can be solved by either:

• Manually fetching any data for each route on the server before rendering, which can be hard to maintain.
• Sending incomplete markup back to the client and leting the client fetch the data. But this complete removes the point of isomorphic/universal rendering.

This library attempts to solve this problem in a fairly simple way. By listing your action dependencies for each component explicitly, and returning promises from any async actions, we can watch and wait for those promises to resolve on the server (only promises are supported at the moment).

How it works

On the client

As i mentioned above - the actions simply get fired off on componentDidMount. It's up to you to handle any loading states - no props are passed down to your component.

On the server

We call ReactDOM.renderToStaticMarkup to reliably work out which actions need to fire. Because it actually renders the app - it runs componentWillMount on the right components.

When the actions have been resolved and the state has been set, you can simply call ReactDOM.renderToString and send the resulting markup back to the client.

In most situations it would only take 1 render pass to resolve all promises in your app. If you know how many passes it should take then you can set that via the maxPasses property. So a common case would be maxPasses: 1

Each components' actions get fired only once, although it may take multiple render passes to fire off all actions if there are chains of async dependencies.

An async dependency chain is described by the following scenario:

Component A

• Depends on on API call, then renders Component B when data is available

Component B

• Only renders when Component A's action has resolved.
• Depends on a different API call.
• Now depends on a chain of 2 API calls; first Component A's, then its own.

This would take 2/3 passes to guarantee all promises have been resolved.

• 1st pass renders A and fires off its actions.
• 2nd pass renders A and B, skipping A's actions (as they have already been fired), and fires off B's actions.
• 3rd pass (if maxPasses has not been set) renders A and B to check no other components with async dependencies have been rendered.

How many passes your app needs to render is completely down to design. It's best to avoid these chains of async dependencies where possible, as it increases loading time on both client server. This could be done by defining all action dependencies at the Route Component level for example.

Installing

npm install react-async-actions --save

Example Usage

Redux Example

UserComponent.js

import { connect } from 'react-redux';
import { asyncActions } from 'react-async-actions';
 
const mapStateToProps = (state) => ({
  id: state.user.id,
  name: state.user.name
});
const mapDispatchToProps = { getUserName };
const actionsToFire = (props) => [
  props.getUserName(props.id)
];
 
@connect(mapStateToProps, mapDispatchToProps)
@asyncActions(actionsToFire)
class User extends Component {
  render() {
    // Need this.props.name here
  }
}

server.js

import { fireAsyncActions } from 'react-async-actions';
import { Provider } from 'react-redux';
import store from './store';
 
const element = (
  <Provider store={store}>
    <App />
  </Provider>
);
 
const options = {
  maxPasses: 1
};
 
fireAsyncActions(element, options)
  .then(() => {
    // Promises will be resolved at this point, store will be up to date
    // Now can do one final render to generate the full markup from the initialised state
    const markup = renderToString(element);
    // ...
  });

MobX Example

UserComponent.js

import { observer, inject } from 'mobx-react';
import { asyncActions } from 'react-async-actions';
 
const mapStateToProps = (stores, ownProps) => ({
  id: stores.user.id,
  name: stores.user.name,
  getUserName: stores.user.getUserName
});
const actionsToFire = (props) => [
  props.getUserName(props.id)
];
 
@inject(mapStateToProps)
@asyncActions(actionsToFire)
@observer
class User extends Component {
  // Need this.props.name here
}

server.js

import { fireAsyncActions } from 'react-async-actions';
import { Provider } from 'mobx-react';
import stores from './stores';
 
const element = (
  <Provider {...stores}>
    <App />
  </Provider>
);
 
const options = {
  maxPasses: 1
};
 
fireAsyncActions(element, options)
  .then(() => {
    // Promises will be resolved at this point, store will be up to date
    // Now can do one final render to generate the full markup from the initialised state
    const markup = renderToString(element);
    // ...
  });

API

asyncActions(mapPropsToActions)

Component decorator, takes in a function with a props parameter.

• mapPropsToActions(props) - should return an array of actions (not to be confused with a Redux action object). These 'actions' can be whatever you want, synchronous or asynchronous, as long as the async actions return a promise, so we know when the action has resolved.

fireAsyncActions(element [, options])

• element - React element to resolve actions for (usually the root)
• options - Options object with the the following properties
  • maxPasses optional - limits the number of render passes. Recommended if you know how many passes it should take to fire all your actions. E.g. if you have no async dependency chains (described above) but you do have async actions, set this to 1. default: Inifinity

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License

MIT