redux-tower

Saga powered routing engine for Redux apps.

redux-tower provides a way to fully control client-side routing with its related side effects such as data fetching, user authentication, fancy animations.

NOTICE: This package is ACTIVELY under development. API (both public and internal) may change suddenly. Do NOT use in production.

Installation

npm install --save redux-tower

The Goal

• Integrated, Battery-included, but Replaceable
• Affinity with Redux

Why?

• react-router is just a component switcher. I don't want to depend on React component lifecycle.
• react-router-redux doesn't help you to do something before showing a page component.
• redux-saga brings long-running processes with async control flow to Redux.

About redux-saga-router

redux-saga-router is a great routing library, which brings sagas to the chaotic router world and gives a way to do side effects in redux-saga way when associated url is activated. However, it can't be used to control the timing of showing the page component and what component should be shown, because both react-router and redux-saga-router are working separately. I feel it annoying to maintain the separated route definitions.

Examples

Online Demo

• Minimum: Demo | Minimum usage example with Hash based history.
• Blog: Demo | Real World Blog app using Semantic UI React.

redux-logger is enabled. Open the JavaScript console of developer tools in your browser. You can also use Redux DevTools extension to see the store and the actions being fired.

Try in local

Clone this repository and run following npm commands.

npm install
npm start

And then open http://localhost:8080/ with your favorite browser.

Usage

Here is a SFA (Single File Application) that shows you a simple routing with side effects.

// Pages
function Navigation() {
  return <ul>
    <li><a href='#/'>Index</a></li>
    <li><a href='#/tower'>Tower</a></li>
  </ul>;
}

class Index extends Component {
  render() {
    return <div>
      <h1>Index</h1>
      <Navigation />
      <p>Hi, here is index page.</p>
    </div>;
  }
}

class Tower extends Component {
  render() {
    return <div>
      <h1>Tower</h1>
      <Navigation />
      <p>Here is tower page. You waited a while for loading this page.</p>
    </div>;
  }
}

// Routes
const routes = {
  '/': Index,
  *'/tower'() {
    yield call(delay, 1000);
    yield put(actions.changeComponent(Tower));
  }
};

// History
const history = createHashHistory();

// Saga
function* rootSaga() {
  yield fork(routerSaga, { history, routes });
}

// Reducer
const reducer = combineReducers(
  { router: routerReducer }
);

const sagaMiddleware = createSagaMiddleware();
const store = createStore(reducer, {}, applyMiddleware(
  sagaMiddleware, logger()
));
sagaMiddleware.run(rootSaga);

ReactDOM.render(
  <Provider store={store}>
    <Router />
  </Provider>,
document.getElementById('container'));

API / Building Blocks

redux-tower consists of several different kinds of elements/components. In this section, I'd like to introduce them step by step and how to integrate with your Redux application.

Routes

First of all, you need to have the route definition which contains URL patterns and route actions. Behavior is deadly simple. When a url pattern is activated, the engine tests URL patterns, and pick a route action from your definition, and calls it. The URL pattern is a plain string, but is able to capture a part of URL and captured values are passed to a route action as named parameters. You can write a route action includes async control flows and interactions with Redux naturally thanks to redux-saga.

import { actions } from 'redux-tower';
import Home from '../path/to/home';

const routes = {
  '/': function* homePage() {
    // Do something, such as data fetching, authentication, etc.
    yield call(fetch, ...);

    // Update Redux's state
    yield put(data(...));

    // Pass a component you want to show
    yield put(actions.changeComponent(Home));
  },

  // Receive query string like '/posts?q=keyword'
  // Use method syntax
  *'/posts'({ query }) {
    yield call(loadPosts, query);
    yield put(actions.changeComponent(PostsIndex));
  },

  // Receive named parameters like '/posts/1'
  '/posts/:id': function* postsShowPage({ params: { id } }) {
    yield call(loadPost, id);
    yield put(actions.changeComponent(PostsShow));
  },

  // [WIP] Redirect to '/posts/:id' route with fixed parameter
  '/about': '/posts/2',

  // Assign React component directly (except Stateless Functional Components)
  '/contact': Contact,
};

History

redux-tower is built on history package so that you can choose a strategy from Hash based or History API.

// History API
import { createBrowserHistory as createHistory } from 'redux-tower';

// Or Hash based
import { createHashHistory as createHistory } from 'redux-tower';

// ...

const history = createHistory();

Saga

The core of routing engine, which mainly have two respnsibilities:

• Detects location changes from history instance, reflects location data to Redux's store, and triggers route actions
• Watches history related Redux's actions and operates history instance

Since it's provided as a saga, what you have to do is just launching it using fork effect in the root saga of your application. Don't forget to pass the option when you fork. Here is a list of options.

• history: An instance of createBrowserHistory() or createHashHistory().
• routes: A route definition that previously introduced.

• initial: [Optional] Initial component, which is used until a location change is occurred.
• cancel: [Optional] A saga, which is called when a running route action was cancelled by other route actions.

import { saga as router } from 'redux-tower';

// ...

export default function rootSaga() {
  yield fork(router, { history, routes });

  // ...
}

Reducer

A reducer is used to expose the location data to Redux's store.

• path: String. Path string, which is stripped a query string.
• params: Object. Named parameters, which is mapped with placeholders in route patterns. /users/:id with /users/1 gets { id: '1' }.
• query: Object. Parsed query string. /search?q=hoge gets { q: 'hoge' }.
• splats: Array. [WIP]

import { reducer as router } from 'redux-tower';

// ...

export default combineReducers(
  { /* your reducers */, router }
);

React components

These React components will help you for building an application. I'm happy to hear feature requests and merge your PRs if you feel it doesn't satisfy your needs.

<Router>

A simple component switcher, which is connected with Redux.

import { Router } from 'redux-tower/react';

// ...

ReactDOM.render(
  <Provider store={configureStore()}>
    <Router />
  </Provider>,
document.getElementById('container'));

<Link>

<Link> component helps you to put a link in your Redux application.

import { Link } from 'redux-tower/react';

// ...

class Page extends Component {
  render() {
    return <div>
      <Link to='/'>Home</Link>
      <Link external to='https://github.com/kuy'>@kuy</Link>
    </div>;
  }
}

The Blueprint (not implemented all)

const routes = {
  // Assign React component directry
  '/': Index,

  // Receive query parameters like '/posts?q=Apple'
  '/posts': function* postsIndexPage({ query }) {
    // Fetch list of posts with search and paging feature
    yield call(fetchPosts, query);

    // Show post index page
    yield PostsIndex;
  },

  // Receive named parameters like '/posts/1'
  '/posts/:id': function* postsShowPage({ params: { id } }) {
    try {
      // Fetch a single post
      yield call(fetchPost);

      // Show post show page
      yield PostsShow;

    } finally {
      if (yield cancelled()) {
        // Cancel something
      }
    }
  },

  // Redirect to other route
  '/about': '/posts/2',

  '/login': function* usersLoginPage() {
    if (yield select(isLoggedIn)) {
      // Nothing to do
    } else {
      // Show login page
      yield UsersLogin;

      // Wait for login
      yield take(...);

      if (/* check auth */) {
        yield '/';
      } else {
        // Already in login page, nothing to do
      }
    }
  },

  '/logout': function* usersLogoutPage() {
    if (yield select(isLoggedIn)) {
      // Logout
      yield put(logout());

      // Show top page
      yield Index;
    } else {
      // Nothing to do
    }
  },
};

Author

Yuki Kodama / @kuy

Acknowledgment

redux-tower has inspired by redux-saga-router. Big thanks to @jfairbank.

License

MIT