React Redux Async Render

It's set of few middlewares and helpers for rendering React/Redux applications with async actions like getting data from API without changing data flow in application.

Usage

Simply, register asyncMiddleware, repeatMiddleware or ignoreNodeMiddleware to your Redux store. Using simple async, repeat and clientOnly properties in your actions which goes through Redux store, you can handle how they work.

Async middleware

It's used to handle if application is in working or idle state. When fired action has async property set to start - async jobs counter is incremented, end - decremented.

Best way to get through async actions is to prepare request and finish action for each of them. Remember, that if you want to dispatch these actions on mounting component do it in componentWillMount instead of componentDidMount method!

const middleware = createAsyncMiddleware({
  key: 'async'    // Property used to determine if action is async(default: async)
})
 
middleware.isWorking() // checks if there are async methods running right now
middleware.onIdle(func) // callback ran when it's ready, returns unregister function to clear its reference

Repeat middleware

It's not so common to use. Mainly it's needed when you're subscribing somewhere, e.g by WebSocket. Add repeat: true to your action to queue it.

const middleware = createRepeatMiddleware({
  key: 'repeat'    // Property used to determine if action should be repeated client-side (default: repeat)
})
 
middleware.getQueue() // array of queued actions
middleware.clear() // clear list of queued actions

IgnoreNode middleware

It's middleware to prohibit some actions of being dispatched on server-side (e.g. subscribing - combined with repeat middleware). Add clientOnly: true to your action to use it. Remember, that it should be added before any other middleware (or after repeat middleware).

const middleware = createIgnoreNodeMiddleware({
  key: 'clientOnly'    // Property used to determine if action should be ignored server-side (default: clientOnly)
})

Render helper

It's combining all of this things together. It needs react-dom to be installed.

You have to provide to it callback ({ html, state, actions }, err) and some options.

render(callback, {
   store: store,            // Redux store
   asyncMiddleware: m1,     // Instance of async middleware 
   repeatMiddleware: m2,    // Instance of repeat middleware
   createVirtualDom: func,  // Method to create virtual DOM to render
   tries: 1                 // Number of tries to render after idle status (default: 1)
})

Later you can find some example

To do

• Add timeout option for async render
• Add possibility to override ReactDOMServer.render method
• Add examples (+ instructions how to use it in real code)
• Prepare missing unit tests