fluxible

Fluxible

Pluggable container for isomorphic flux applications that provides interfaces that are common throughout the Flux architecture and restricts usage of these APIs to only the parts that need them to enforce the unidirectional flow.

Install

npm install --save fluxible

Usage

var AppComponent = require('./components/Application.jsx'); // Top level React component
var Fluxible = require('fluxible');
var app = new Fluxible({
    appComponent: AppComponent // optional top level component
});

// Per request/session
var context = app.createContext();
var loadPageAction = require('./actions/loadPage');
context.executeAction(loadPageAction, {/*payload*/}, function (err) {
    if (err) throw err;
    var element = AppComponent({
        // Allow the component to access only certain methods of this session context
        context: context.getComponentContext();
    });
    // OR since the appComponent was passed into the constructor:
    // var element = context.createElement({});

    var html = React.renderToString(element);

    var appState = app.dehydrate(context);
    // Expose appState to the client
});

For a more extensive example of usage both on the server and the client, see flux-examples.

Dehydration/Rehydration

Fluxible uses reserved methods throughout called rehydrate and dehydrate which are responsible for taking a snapshot of server-side state so that it can be sent to the browser and rehydrated back to the same state in the browser. This naming scheme also extends to dispatchr which takes care of dehydrating/rehydrating the store instances.

There are two kinds of state within fluxible:

• Application State: Settings and data that are registered on server start
• Context State: Settings and data that are created per context/request

Application level rehydrate method is allowed asynchronous operation in case it needs to load JavaScript or data on demand.

Context Types

Within a context, Fluxible creates interfaces providing access to only certain parts of the system. These are broken down as such:

• Action Context: interface accessible by action creator methods. Passed as first parameter to all action creators.
• Component Context: interface accessible by React components. Should be passed as prop to top level React component and then propagated to child components that require acess to it.
• Store Context: interface accessible by stores. Passed as first parameter to all stores. See dispatchr docs

Creating Plugins

Plugins allow you to extend the interface of each context type. Here, we'll give components access to the getFoo() function:

var Fluxible = require('fluxible');
var app = new Fluxible();

app.plug({
    // Required unique name property
    name: 'TestPlugin',
    // Called after context creation to dynamically create a context plugin
    plugContext: function (options) {
        // `options` is the same as what is passed into `createContext(options)`
        var foo = options.foo;
        // Returns a context plugin
        return {
            // Method called to allow modification of the component context
            plugComponentContext: function (componentContext) {
                componentContext.getFoo = function () {
                    return foo;
                };
            },
            //plugActionContext: function (actionContext) {}
            //plugStoreContext: function (storeContext) {}

            // Allows context plugin settings to be persisted between server and client. Called on server
            // to send data down to the client
            dehydrate: function () {
                return {
                    foo: foo
                };
            },
            // Called on client to rehydrate the context plugin settings
            rehydrate: function (state) {
                foo = state.foo;
            }
        };
    },
    // Allows dehydration of application plugin settings
    dehydrate: function () { return {}; },
    // Allows rehydration of application plugin settings
    rehydrate: function (state) {}
});

var context = app.createContext({
    foo: 'bar'
});

context.getComponentContext().getFoo(); // returns 'bar'
// or this.props.context.getFoo() from a React component

Example plugins:

• fluxible-plugin-fetchr - Polymorphic RESTful services
• fluxible-plugin-routr - Routing behavior

Mixin

The mixin (accessible via require('fluxible').Mixin) uses React's context to provide access to the component context from within a component. This prevents you from having to pass the context to every component via props. This requires that you pass the component context as the context to React:

var FluxibleMixin = require('fluxible').Mixin;
var Component = React.createClass({
    mixins: [FluxibleMixin],
    getInitialState: function () {
        return this.getStore(FooStore).getState();
    }
});

React.withContext(context.getComponentContext(), function () {
    var html = React.renderToString(<Component />);
});

The mixin can also be used to statically list store dependencies and listen to them automatically in componentDidMount. This is done by adding a static property storeListeners in your component.

You can do this with an array, which will default all store listeners to call the onChange method:

var FluxibleMixin = require('fluxible').Mixin;
var MockStore = require('./stores/MockStore'); // Your store
var Component = React.createClass({
    mixins: [FluxibleMixin],
    statics: {
        storeListeners: [MockStore]
    },
    onChange: function () {
        done();
    },
});

Or you can be more explicit with which function to call for each store by using a hash:

var FluxibleMixin = require('fluxible').Mixin;
var MockStore = require('./stores/MockStore'); // Your store
var Component = React.createClass({
    mixins: [FluxibleMixin],
    statics: {
        storeListeners: {
            onMockStoreChange: [MockStore]
        }
    },
    onMockStoreChange: function () {
        done();
    },
});

This prevents boilerplate for listening to stores in componentDidMount and unlistening in componentWillUnmount.

Helper Utilities

Fluxible also exports dispatcher's store utilities so that you do not need to have an additional dependency on dispatchr. They are available by using require('fluxible/utils/BaseStore') and require('fluxible/utils/createStore').

APIs

• Fluxible
• FluxibleContext

License

This software is free to use under the Yahoo Inc. BSD license. See the LICENSE file for license text and copyright information.