contextize

Contextize

React context-based state management, simplified

npm i contextize

Why Contextize?

In React, a common pattern is to have:

• Logic-only components, or "controllers", usually wrapping childs in a context
• UI-only components, consuming the contexts

Contextize simplifies this pattern by separating:

• Logic: custom, written by you
• Context/Provider semantics: always the same, provided by Contextize

Simple Contexts

Let's say we're managing a boolean state. In a typical React app, we'd have to:

A) Vanilla React

• Create a context
• Create a hook
• Create a provider

import { createContext, useContext, useState } from 'react'

const ctx = createContext({})
const useCtx = () => useContext(ctx)

function Provider({ children }) {
  const [state, setState] = useState()
  return <ctx.Provider value={[state, setState]} children={children} />
}

Notice that useState() is the only non-boilerplate code. Everything else is the same.

B) Contextize

In contextize, we only define a hook that returns the context value. Wrapping it in a provider is handled by contextize:

import { contextize } from 'contextize'

function useController() {
  return useState(false)
}
const ctx = contextize(useController)

The ctx object gives access to both the provider and the hook:

Example Usage

function Component() {
  const [state, setState] = ctx.use()
  ...
}

function App() {
  return (
    <ctx.Provider>
      <Component />
    </ctx.Provider>
  )
}

Tagged Contexts

Another common pattern is to have a tagged state. Depending on the tag, we render different components. For example:

export type State = {
  tag: 'loading' | 'error'
} | {
  tag: 'loaded'
  data: string
}

In a typical React app, we'd have to:

A) Vanilla React

• Create a context, hook and provider (as before)
• Add an extra layer with explicit switching logic
• Pass down the state via props or create yet another context

const ctx = createContext({})
const useCtx = () => useContext(ctx)

function Provider({ children }) {
  const [state, setState] = useState<State>({ tag: 'loading' })
  useEffect(() => { ... }, [])
  return <ctx.Provider value={state} children={children} />
}

function Loaded({ data }) {
  return <p>{data}</p>
}

function Switcher() {
  const state = useCtx()
  if (state.tag === 'loading') return <p>Loading...</p>
  if (state.tag === 'error') return <p>Error :/</p>
  return <Loaded data={state.data} />
}

function App() {
  return (
    <Provider>
      <Switcher />
    </Provider>
  )
}

Notice that:

• For the provider: only useState() and useEffect() are non-boilerplate
• For switching, we're forced to add a wrapping component

B) Contextize

In Contextize, we only need to define a hook returning the (tagged) context value. For switching, we use the provided guard components.

import { tagged } from 'contextize'

function useController(): State {
  const [state, setState] = useState<State>({ tag: 'loading' })
  useEffect(() => { ... }, [])
  return state
}

const ctx = tagged(useController)

Like before, ctx contains both the provider and hook. But it also includes:

• Guard components: ctx.Loading, ctx.Error, ctx.Loaded
• Guarded hooks: ctx.useLoading, ctx.useError, ctx.useLoaded

Example Usage

function Loaded() {
  const { data } = ctx.useLoaded()
  // ...
}

function App() {
  return (
    <ctx.Provider>
      <ctx.Loading><p>Loading...</p></ctx.Loading>
      <ctx.Error><p>Error :/</p></ctx.Error>
      <ctx.Loaded><Loaded /></ctx.Loaded>
    </ctx.Provider>
  )
}

Note that these are completely typed.

If we added a weirdState tag, we'd get ctx.WeirdState and ctx.useWeirdState (and typescript would know about it).