Where and how to update UI state for thunks?

[cidylle]

Forgive me if the answer is trivial but I can't find an example in the documentation or elsewhere and I would like to give redux-ui a try and adapt my existing code to it. Where would you recommend updating the UI state for asynchronous actions wrapped around a redux-thunk such as retrieving a resource through an API?

For example I would just like to update a isLoading state specific to a component that depends on an asynchronous action (an API call, dispatching actionCreators such as IN_PROGRESS, SUCCESS which would modify the UI state). Any example or advice on how to structure and implement that with redux-ui ? Thank you.

[vanhtuan0409]

I think this problem is not for redux-ui
When you fire an API call, usually 3 action could be fired

• START_FETCHING (immediately after you call to API)
• SUCCESS or ERROR (after receive response from server)

Loading state should be store in the same reducer which handle received data from server (not for UI state).

[br0wn]

If you're using redux-thunk, there's a nice thing of dispatch returning whatever the thunk returns, so you can have your async action return promise, and use that promise in your component to trigger UI update.

// action.js
export const asyncAction = () => (dispatch) => {
   return fetch(url, options).then( response => {
      // do something with response
      // ...
   });
}

// component.jsx

export class Component extends React.Component {
    doSomething(){
       this.updateUI({loading: true});

       this.dispatch(asyncAction()).then(
              () => this.updateUI({loading: false}
       ).catch(
              () => this.updateUI({loading: false, error: true}
       );
    }

   // ...
}

Please note that the code above is just a proof of concept and wasn't tested. Also, I don't know if this is bad practice or not, but it is useful when you don't want to add actions and reducer switches just to set some flag consumed by UI.. so be wary if using this approach :)

[cidylle]

@br0wn It doesn't seem to me like a bad approach. Thanks for the tip I'll give it a try :)