redux-pending-middleware

Redux Pending Middleware

A redux middleware which tracks your asynchronous redux actions (effects) and informs about the progress through selector function.

List of supported libraries that process redux effects:

• redux-toolkit
• redux-saga
• redux-thunk / redux-promise-middleware

It's worth mention that redux-pending-middleware allows you to code simultaneously with all the above libraries simultaneously.

Problem it solves

Have you ever been in a situation where you need to add a global loader/spinner to any side effect that you process using third-party libraries such as Redux and some kind of library for asynchronous processing, for example, redux-saga / redux-thunk / promise middlewares?

Why is that bad?

• It is very unpleasant to create separately for this state and add start and end actions for these actions to each request.
• This is an open place to make mistakes because it's very easy to forget to add or remove these actions.
• It needs to be supported and somehow live with it.

Well, redux-pending-middleware does this from scratch:

• tracks your asynchronous code
• collects them in a bunch
• efficiently calculates active pending effects
• provides a selector for information about the current state of application loading
• available for debug in redux-devtools
• independent of a particular asynchronous processing solution. Can be used simultaneously with redux-saga and redux-toolkit
• replaces redux-thunk in the matters of side effects (not actions chaining) and redux-promise-middleware (essentially uses it out of the box)

Quick start

Installation

npm install redux-pending-middleware

Extend reducers

redux-pending-middleware provides its own state for storing active effects (pending promise phase).

import { combineReducers } from 'redux';
import { insertPending } from 'redux-pending-middleware';

import { planetReducer as planet } from './planetReducer';
import { universeReducer as universe } from './universeReducer';

export const rootReducer = combineReducers(
  insertPending({
    planet,
    universe
  })
);

Configuration

Depending on what you use in the project, import into the project. Now let's dwell on this in more detail.

• redux-toolkit

This approach is simplest and clear. Just add the middleware and use your regular toolkit async actions as usual.

import { configureStore, getDefaultMiddleware } from '@reduxjs/toolkit';
import { reduxPendingToolkitMiddleware } from 'redux-pending-middleware';
import { rootReducer as reducer } from './root.reducer';

const defaultMiddlewares = getDefaultMiddleware();
const middleware = [reduxPendingToolkitMiddleware, ...defaultMiddlewares];

export const store = configureStore({ reducer, middleware });

• redux-saga

If your project uses redux-saga no additional configuration needed.

This approach is that you need to wrap the saga worker. This allows to track the start and the end of each effect.

import { trackWorker } from 'redux-pending-middleware';
import { call, put, takeEvery } from '@redux-saga/core/effects';

function* getPlanets() {
  yield takeEvery(getPlanetsRequest.type, trackWorker(handleGetPlanets));
}

function* handleGetPlanets() {
  const planets = yield call(Api.getPlanets);
  yield put(getPlanetsCompleted(planets));
}

This approach successfully combined with custom wrappers on top of the worker, for example, error handling.

const workerWrapper = worker => {
  return trackWorker(customWrapper);

  function* customWrapper(...args) {
    try {
      yield* worker(...args);
    } catch (error) {
      yield put(setFetchError(error));
    }
  }
};

• redux-thunk / redux-promise-middleware

Ok, here I need to explain the problem a bit

It’s not entirely true this package supports redux-thunk, but the truth is that you can forward promises to payload. That is the way redux-promise-middleware does. At the moment, this library completely replaces redux-promise-middleware. In the plans, through the collaboration, expand the API of redux-promise-middleware in order to reuse their code.

For details, you can go to read the documentation of redux-promise-middleware about how this works.

In short, everything is quite simple. You pass Promise as payload and we will have stateful types inside the reducer. Let's say we have action type GET_PLANETS, so when we call our action with a type and a promise in the payload, it first triggers a reducer with GET_PLANETS_PENDING. Then, when our promise resolved, we will have GET_PLANETS_FULFILLED type inside the reducer, and a value of resolved promise as a payload. But, if an error occurs in our promise, then we get the type GET_PLANETS_REJECTED with a reason within property payload.

import { configureStore, getDefaultMiddleware } from '@reduxjs/toolkit';
import { reduxPendingPromiseMiddleware } from 'redux-pending-middleware';
import { rootReducer as reducer } from './root.reducer';

const defaultMiddlewares = getDefaultMiddleware();
const middleware = [reduxPendingPromiseMiddleware, ...defaultMiddlewares];

export const store = configureStore({ reducer, middleware });

/**
 * somewhere in the /src
 * saga usage example with trackWorker
 */
function getPlanets() {
  return {
    type: 'GET_PLANETS',
    payload: fetch('planets')
  };
}

Connecting the dots

For everything to work at the same time, you need to use all the previous steps

import { configureStore, getDefaultMiddleware } from '@reduxjs/toolkit';
import {
  reduxPendingPromiseMiddleware,
  reduxPendingToolkitMiddleware,
  trackWorker
} from 'redux-pending-middleware';
import createSagaMiddleware from '@redux-saga/core';
import { call, put, takeEvery } from '@redux-saga/core/effects';
import { rootReducer as reducer } from './root.reducer';
import { rootSaga } from './root.saga';

const defaultMiddlewares = getDefaultMiddleware();
const sagaMiddleware = createSagaMiddleware();
const middleware = [
  reduxPendingPromiseMiddleware,
  reduxPendingToolkitMiddleware,
  sagaMiddleware,
  ...defaultMiddlewares
];

export const store = configureStore({ reducer, middleware });

sagaMiddleware.run(rootSaga);

/**
 * somewhere in the /src
 * saga usage example with trackWorker
 */
function* getPlanets() {
  yield takeEvery(getPlanetsRequest.type, trackWorker(handleGetPlanets));
}

function* handleGetPlanets() {
  const planets = yield call(Api.getPlanets);
  yield put(getPlanetsCompleted(planets));
}

Selector

Just a regular usage of redux selectors

import React from 'react';
import { useSelector } from 'react-redux';
import { selectIsPending } from 'redux-pending-middleware';

import { YourApplication } from './YourApplication';
import { AppLoader } from './App.loader';

export const App = () => {
  const isPending = useSelector(selectIsPending);

  return isPending ? <AppLoader /> : <YourApplication />;
};

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

If you made a PR, make sure to update tests as appropriate and keep the examples consistent.

Contact

Please reach me out if you have any questions or comments.

• GitHub
• Twitter

References

I find these packages useful and similar for this one. So, it's important to mention them here.

• redux-pending
• redux-pender
• redux-promise-middleware

The main reason why I didn’t choose them: they do one thing, and it’s impossible to add something second to them.

License

This project is MIT licensed.