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Photo by Sebastian Unrau / Unsplash

So the React Conference just happened and as always something new happened. Hooks happened! The React team talked about suspense, lazy loading, concurrent rendering, and hooks :D.

Now I’ll talk about my favorite hook useReducer and how you use it.

import React, { useReducer } from 'react';

const initialState = {
  loading: false,
  count: 0,
};

const reducer = (state, action) => {
  switch (action.type) {
    case 'increment': {
      return { ...state, count: state.count + 1, loading: false };
    }
    case 'decrement': {
      return { ...state, count: state.count - 1, loading: false };
    }
    case 'loading': {
      return { ...state, loading: true };
    }
    default: {
      return state;
    }
  }
};

const delay = (time = 1500) => {
  return new Promise(resolve => {
    setTimeout(() => {
      resolve(true);
    }, time);
  });
};

function PokemonInfo() {
  const [{ count, loading }, dispatch] = useReducer(reducer, initialState);
  const onHandleIncrement = async () => {
    dispatch({ type: 'loading' });
    await delay(500);
    dispatch({ type: 'increment' });
  };
  const onHandleDecrement = async () => {
    dispatch({ type: 'loading' });
    await delay(500);
    dispatch({ type: 'decrement' });
  };
  return (
    <div>
      <p>Count {loading ? 'loading..' : count}</p>
      <button type="button" onClick={onHandleIncrement}>
        +
      </button>
      <button type="button" onClick={onHandleDecrement}>
        -
      </button>
    </div>
  );
}

export default PokemonInfo;
useReducerExample.js

In my PokemonInfo component, I have:

const [{ count, loading }, dispatch] = useReducer(reducer, initialState);

Which is equivalent to:

const [state, dispatch] = useReducer(reducer, initialState);
const { count, loading } = state;

So what is const [state, dispatch] = useReducer(param1, param2) Let’s first talk about array destructuing which is happening below.

const [state, dispatch] = useReducer(initialState);

Here’s an example of array destructing:

let myHeroes = ['Ant man', 'Batman']; // Mixing DC & Marvel :D
let [marvelHero, dcHero] = myHeroes; // destructuring array
/**
* myHeroes[0] == marvelHero => is 'Ant man'
* myHeroes[1] == dcHero => is 'Batman'
*/

So the method useReducer has two items in its array state and dispatch. Also the useReducer takes in two parameters: one is reducer the other is initial-state.

In the useReducer param reducer, I pass in:

const reducer = (state, action) => {
  switch (action.type) {
    case 'increment': {
      return { ...state, count: state.count + 1, loading: false };
    }
    case 'decrement': {
      return { ...state, count: state.count - 1, loading: false };
    }
    case 'loading': {
      return { ...state, loading: true };
    }
    default: {
      return state;
    }
  }
};

What this does is it takes in two arguments. One is the current state of the reducer and the other is the action. The action.type decides how it will update the reducer and return a new state to us.

So if the action.type === increment

case 'increment': {      
  return { ...state, count: state.count + 1, loading: false };    
}

…it will return the state, which will have its count updated to +1 and loading set to false. Also where it says state.count + 1 here the state is actually the previous state.

In useReducer param initialState I pass in:

const initialState = {  
  loading: false,  
  count: 0
};

So if this is the initial state, the useReducer method returns two items from its array, state and dispatch. The state method is an object which has two keys count & loading that I destructure in my destructured array.

So I destructure an array, and inside the array, I destructure an object on the first index of the array like below.

const [{ count, loading }, dispatch] = useReducer(reducer, initialState);

Also I have a method called delay

// return true after 1500ms in time argument is passed to.
const delay = (time = 1500) => {  
  return new Promise(resolve => {    
      setTimeout(() => {      
         resolve(true);    
      }, time);  
   });
};

Now in my render method when I click the + button

<button type="button" onClick={onHandleIncrement}>+</button>

the onHandleIncrement function is executed, which does the following:

const onHandleIncrement = async () => {    
   dispatch({ type: 'loading' });    
   await delay(500);    
   dispatch({ type: 'increment' });  
};

It initially sets loading to true, adds a delay of 500ms and then increments the counter. Now I know this is not a real world case example, but it explains the point as to how a reducer works.

Last thing:

<p>Count {loading ? 'loading..' : count}</p>

If loading is true, I show Count loading.. else I show Count {value}.

This is how it looks in the UI:

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Count example using useReducer hook

I tried replicating Dan Abramov’s code that he showcased at the React Conference 2018. Here is the link to the code repository. Enjoy. :)

Kindly do note that hooks are in an alpha version of React, and are in no way advised to be used in production. But there is a strong possibility that they will become a huge part of the eco-system in the future. So you should start playing around with react hooks now.