react-fn

React-Fn v.2

A simple, functional approach to React

Install

Globally install parcel.js (This is the project bundler).

npm install -g parcel-bundler

Globally install douglas (This unwraps the seed project )

npm install -g douglas

Get react-fn-seed and install using douglas

douglas get react-fn-seed

Now you can run using npm start

The Low-down

React-fn is a functional approach to React. Take a look at this basic app below. You'll notice that State and Actions are decoupled from Components altogether, making things clean and simple.

• Components take in State and Actions
• Components can display State, but Components must call Actions to update State
• Upon state-change, the app refreshes

Basic App

// global state
const state = {
  greeting: 'hello world'
};

// functional component has state and actions passed in
const MyComponent = ({ state, actions }) => (
  <div>
    <h1>{state.greeting}</h1>
    <button onClick={ actions.changeGreeting('hello ben') }>Change greeting</button>
    {/* Pass state and actions into any child components */}
    <childComponent state={state} actions={actions}></childComponent>
  </div>
);

// actions have the fn api passed in and fn.updateState can be used to update the App's State
const actions = (fn) => {
  changeGreeting: (fn) => (newGreeting) => fn.updateState('greeting', newGreeting)
}

// This is where your app will be mounted
const mount = document.querySelector('#app');

// run your app
app(state, MyComponent, actions, mount);

Actions

Actions are functions that cause side-effects (Usually state changes).
As you can see above, Actions are passed in to the first component.
Actions are then passed down to child components.
Actions can also be passed into actions to enable action-chaining.

State

Rather than State existing within components, it is stored in a single State object. State is just a pure javascript object (no methods).
State is passed into the first component and can be passed down to child components.

Changing state is done by Actions via the fn.updateState method...

Let's say your state is

some: {
  nested: {
    node: 'hello'
  }
}

and you want to make a change to some.nested.node, then...

fn.updateState('some/nested/node', 'here i am');

State is now changed to

some: {
  nested: {
    node: 'here i am'
  }
}

Whenever fn.updateState is called, the app is rerendered, unless the flag rerender: false is passed in ...

// The following will not rerender the app
fn.updateState('some/nested/node', 'here i am', { rerender: false });

The Advanced Guide

https://github.com/attack-monkey/react-fn/tree/develop/docs/TOC.md