Issue with react-intl's context and shouldComponentUpdate

[gpbl]

After fetching the new locale data, components using shouldComponentUpdate (as those using the React.addons.PureRenderMixin) may block the update of the components, since they are not aware of the changed context. This problem is described here.

[slorber]

Haha exactly, this is what I thought.

Nice try but your idea seems to work only when you have a single component unfortunatly :(

[gpbl]

I went on with the extended PureRenderMixin as for this issue, facebook/react#2517, eventually I'd fallback to props. I'm open to find better alternatives :-)

[slorber]

props is just not manageable for my very large SPA :( I'll have to reload the full page for now :(

[gpbl]

Let's go for the reload :-) @caridy is right when he says the level of complexity raised by this is not worth the hassle.

[slorber]

I've found a workaround:
facebook/react#3038 (comment)

:)

[caridy]

👍 reload for the win!

[gpbl]

In this issue we are discussing an approach to skip the context using a Flux store. By listening to a Flux store, we should be able to change the locale without reloading the page.

[eplawless]

At Netflix we have this same problem, where e.g. if voice gets enabled on an XBOX, or if our locale changes, or if we switch to a kids' experience, we want to force a global re-render without respecting shouldComponentUpdate.

There are lots of external events across all of our platforms (web, mobile, TV) which should have this behaviour.

We've currently got a flawed solution in place using context. We've inserted a layer underneath shouldComponentUpdate (by forcing components to implement shouldComponentUpdateOverride instead) which forces an update if context.forceUpdate is or was set, or if shouldUpdateChildContext is a function returning true (inspired by facebook/react#2517).

It would be really nice to have a forceGlobalUpdate, forceUpdateRecursive, or similar. The context solution forces more re-renders than we'd like, and is very much a kludge.

[caridy]

/cc @sebmarkbage, can you chime in here?

[sebmarkbage]

Yea, this is broken and one reason context is undocumented. I think that future versions of React will include an explicit determination of a context key change which will deeply force and update of every component that reads from that context key.

Context will be completely removed from shouldComponentUpdate since it doesn't make sense.

On Mar 31, 2015, at 11:45 PM, Caridy Patiño notifications@github.com wrote:

/cc @sebmarkbage, can you chime in here?

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[caridy]

cool, thanks @sebmarkbage. guys, as you can see, we will get this for free with the current implementation of react-intl, no magic is needed, just wait until react gets refactored.

[eplawless]

Thanks @sebmarkbage, looking forward to that update.

[slorber]

@sebmarkbage agree with that solution. Since React has contextTypes for each componant using context you could easily know which components to re-render.

@eplawless have you checked my workaround here?
facebook/react#3038 (comment)
You can see hot language switch in action in our application stample.co if you want (after signup)

[tricoder42]

I solved this problem using subscribe/listen pattern in js-lingui.

HOC InjectI18n provides active language and message catalog for wrapped components. On mount, it subscribes its own forceUpdate. When ProvideI18n component receives new messages or language, it notifies all subscribed components about the change.

So, even if any component above return false in shouldComponentUpdate, the translated text is still updated. Only requirement is, that ProvideI18n component must be above any one with shouldComponentUpdate, obviously. These providers are usually top most components, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Cool thing is that even the Component which uses Trans component (translated message) don't need to update itself and still all translated texts inside will update on change of messages/language:

ProvideI18n -> ... -> Component with multilingual text -> InjectI18n(Trans)
                      ^-- This component and any above doesn't need to update

The subscribe pattern is really simple, you can see it here: https://github.com/lingui/js-lingui/blob/master/packages/lingui-react/src/I18nProvider.js#L64

I also used the same pattern when experimenting with hot reloading of message catalogs (https://github.com/lingui/js-lingui/blob/master/packages/example-usecase/src/App.js#L27) but I have a feeling, there must be a simpler way to do it :)