React Native Shared State

A simple, light weight react native global state manager, packed with cool features.

Now uses hooks as well!!!

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Having looked at redux and ran away tail between my legs I decided to create a much more simple way of managing state across components.

Shared State offers a unique approach, more inline with the way state is managed within a component... making it much easier to learn!

List of features

• Create one (or even multiple) state objects that can be shared between multiple components.
• Have any part of your code update the shared state.
• Register components so that they automatically re-render when selected state properties change.
• Persist state between sessions.

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Download & Installation

$ npm install react-native-shared-state

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Code Demo

The following is a simple demo of Shared State's most basic functions. It will walkthrough the creation of a step counter, using a diplay counter component and increase button component.

Note: this problem would be better suited to using local state but provides a clean overview of Shared State's capabilities.

Create a shared state

import { SharedState } from "react-native-shared-state";

export const CounterState = new SharedState({
  counter: 0
});

Yes, it's that easy to create a shared state with default values

Create the counter display

export default class DisplayCounter extends Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);
    CounterState.register(this, "counter");
  }

  componentWillUnmount() {
    CounterState.unregister(this);
  }

  render() {
    const { counter } = CounterState.state;

    return (
      <View>
        <Text>{counter}</Text>
      </View>
    );
  }
}

By registering the component with key "counter", the component will re-render whenever CounterState's counter property changes.

All registered components need to unregister on unmounting to remove event listeners and avoid memory leaks.

CounterState's properties can be cleanly destructured. Since this is fetched on each render it is alway up to date.

Create the increase button

export default class IncreaseCounter extends Component {
  increaseCounter() {
    const { counter } = CounterState.state;
    CounterState.setState({ counter: counter + 1 });
  }

  render() {
    return (
      <TouchableOpacity
        onPress={() => this.increaseCounter()}
      >
        <Text>+</Text>
      </TouchableOpacity>
    );
  }
}

Again, by destructuring state we have easy access to state properties.

Setting state will overwrite current property causing all components registered to the property to re-render

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Guide

Shared State Construction

To start using shared states first import the class SharedState from your node_modules.

Create a new instance of the SharedState class with the name of your shared state. (This could be a global state, or a more specific shared state as seen later on.)

const ExampleState = SharedState(defaultState: object, options?:{ debugMode?: boolean });

defaultState - An object of key/value pairs that will be the initial state and the state which the share state will return to on reset(). Note: state values can be all types except functions.

debugMode (optional) - Provides console logging of internal processes to aid debugging.

Registering Components

React components will only re-render if they are registered with the shared state. To do this use the register() method. Registration should occur either in the constructor or componentDidMount.

ExampleState.register(this: React.Component, keys: string | Array<string>);

this - Use 'this' to pass the react component itself into the shared state.

keys - The shared state's property/properties that you wish the react component to re-render when updated.

Unregistering Components

All registered components need to unregister() before they are unmounted to remove listeners and prevent memory leaks. This is best done in componentWillUnmount.

ExampleState.unregister(this: React.Component);

this - Use 'this' to pass the react component itself into the shared state.

Getting state properties

The state property get the current state. Warning: do not mutate the state directly as this will not cause components to re-render

const { exampleProp } = ExampleState.state;

Using object destructuring allows quick and clean access to state properties.

Setting state properties

Like react components, shared states are updated using the setState() method, which accepts a partial state, updating corresponding state values. Note: an error will occur here if data validation fails (see data validation below).

ExampleState.setState(partialState: object);

partialState - An object of key/value pairs. Functions can be used as values to manipulate current property values (see setting with functions below).

Reset Properties

State can be easily returned to its default state using the reset() method.

ExampleState.reset();

Using Hooks

With react native version 0.59.0 we can now use hooks! This allows us to write components much more elegantly as functions. The useState(propName) utilises the power of hooks to re-render the function on property change. Using a shared state (see Create a shared state) this can be done with a single line.

export default function DisplayCounter(props) {
  const [state, setState] = CounterState.useState('counter');

  return (
    <View>
      <Text>{state.counter}</Text>
    </View>
  );
}

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Advanced Features

Persist Data

Shared State uses react native's AsyncStorage to save the state between sessions. useStorage() loads the state from local storage and ensures the state is saved when the app closes. Since AsyncStorage is asynchronous the method returns a promise, succeeding on set up.

await ExampleState.intializeStorage(options: {storeName: string, saveOnBackground?: boolean, encryptionKey?: string});

saveOnBackground - If true the app will try to save the data automatically when backgrounded.

encryptionKey - If provided, the state will be stored under AES encrpytion using the key.

Or as a hook that initalizes on component mounting.

ExampleState.useStorage(options: {storeName: string, saveOnBackground?: boolean, encryptionKey?: string});

Author

• Jonti Hudson

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License