redux-history-transitions

Note: this library was called redux-react-router-transitions before, but since version 0.4.0 the hard dependency on react-router has been removed. You can use this library with any routing system that utilizes the history library.

history transitions based on arbitrary actions.

This store enhancer allows you to co-locate transitions next to your actions and have them automatically executed on your history instance, after the action has been dispatched.

Why?

A typical case is that you want to redirect your user to another page, when they log in. There are multiple ways of doing this. You could for example listen to your store and perform a transition based on some kind of loginSuccessful flag. But this type of flag is something that does not actually belong into your state, as it is only used as an internal flag so you know when to transition.

Another way would be to use something like RX, and listen to distinct state changed, so you could transition your user to a page, whenever the loggedIn or user prop on your state changes.

While these approaches work, they make it hard to connect a transition to a specific action. Your transitions are also spread out over your code. redux-history-transitions allows you to embed your transitions directly within your actions and have them executed after your action has been dispatched.

Installation

npm install --save redux-history-transitions

Usage

Create an enhanced store like this:

import { createStore, compose } from 'redux';
import handleTransitions from 'redux-history-transitions';

// you have to create your history instance here and pass it to the store enhancer
// Note: in order to use `search`, you have to enhance your history using the `useQueries`
// enhancer!

const enhancer = handleTransitions(history)
const store = createStore(reducer, initialState, enhancer);

// Note: passing enhancer as the last argument to createStore requires redux@>=3.1.0

Now you can dispatch actions in the following form and have your desired transition automatically executed for you:

// we expect `LOGGED_IN` to have been imported here from your action constants

export default {

  login() {
    return {
      type: LOGGED_IN,
      payload: {
        userId: 123
      },
      meta: {
        transition: (prevState, nextState, action) => ({
          pathname: `/logged-in/${action.payload.userId}`,
          search: '?a=query',
          state: {
            some: 'state',
          },
        }),
      },
    };
  },
}

Now every time you dispatch your login action, a transition to /logged-in/SOMEUSERID will happen automatically. Of course search and state are optional. They are just here to show a complete example.

Passing a transition object

While the above works, it can quickly become tedious if you always have to manually check whether an action was complete successfully or failed. In order to remove this boilerplate you can use an object with a combination of begin, success and failure keys as your meta.transition value. The middleware will automatically inspect an action and determine which handler to call based on action.error and action.meta.done. The usage of error and done is losely based on the FSA (flux standard action) spec. Each handler is optional and will only be called if available. Here is an example which only transitions if the async action succeeded:

export default {

  login() {
    return {
      type: REGISTER_USER,
      payload: {
        username: 'testuser'
      },
      meta: {
        done: true,
        transition: {
          success: (prevState, nextState, action) => ({
            pathname: `/user/${action.payload.userId}`,
          }),
        },
      },
    };
  },
}

Delayed transitions

Sometimes you might want to execute a transition after a delay. In order to do so you can return a promise from your transition handler. The same rules as above apply. If after the delay your state has changed, you can still resolve your promise with undefined in order to prevent any transition. (For example if you user has already manually changed the page).

Here is an example using the bluebird promise library:

export default {

  login() {
    return {
      type: LOGGED_IN,
      payload: {
        userId: 123
      },
      meta: {
        transition: (prevState, nextState, action) => (
          Promise.delay(3000).then(() => {
            pathname: `/logged-in/${action.payload.userId}`,
            search: '?a=query',
            state: {
              some: 'state',
            },
          }),
        ),
      },
    };
  },
}

Example

For a working example check out the example directory!

Running the example app

git clone https://github.com/johanneslumpe/redux-history-transitions.git
cd redux-history-transitions
npm install

cd example
npm install
npm start
open http://localhost:3000

FAQ

Why is this a store enhancer and not a middleware?

Because the transition handlers should receive the state after the action has been dispatched. And I did not want to use something like _.defer.

Can I perform replace transitions instead of push?

Yes, just add replace: true to the object returned by your action's meta.transition function.