Learn Immutable, Redux-observable and Webstorm

Handling async actions that affect your application’s state sounds like a tall order, but Redux makes it possible — and a win-win for you and your app’s users.

In this course, we will begin with nothing more than an empty directory and a text editor. Through small, focused lessons, we’ll learn how to set up a React project that uses Redux for state management and redux-observable for asynchronous actions. We’ll see how ‘epics’ are registered and how they each receive a ‘stream’ of actions from the store.

With an understanding of how things work, we’ll move onto solving common problems like: 
- Ajax cancellation
- creating sequences of async actions
- enabling code reuse through higher-order Observables 
- and much more.

RxJS 5-based middleware for Redux. Compose and cancel async actions to create side effects and more.

redux-observable

Asynchronous State Management with redux-observable v1

***Note: RxJS imports have changed since the publication of this course. Operators now must be passed into `.pipe` to be applied to an observable.***

In this course we will begin with nothing more than an empty directory & a text editor. Through small, focussed lessons we’ll learn how to setup a React project that uses Redux for state management and redux-observable for asynchronous actions. We’ll see how ‘epics’ are registered and how they each receive a ‘stream’ of actions from the store. 

With an understanding of how things work, we’ll move onto solving common problems such as Ajax cancellation, creating sequences of async actions, enabling code reuse through higher-order Observables and much more. 

## **UPDATE:** 
This course is outdated, view updated material here: [Asynchronous State Management with redux-observable v1](https://egghead.io/courses/asynchronous-state-management-with-redux-observable-v1)

React is one of the web’s most popular frameworks for building JavaScript applications. 

If you know what you’re doing, React can drastically simplify how you build, use, and maintain code.

Whether you’re a React newbie or you’re ready for advanced techniques, you can level-up with egghead. Explore our in-depth courses, lessons, and community resources to build more powerful applications and crack open your career.

react

Up and Running with redux-observable

im·mu·ta·ble i(m)ˈmyo͞odəb(ə)l/ adjective - **unchanging over time or unable to be changed**.

Mutating data is the source of never ending headaches in software systems, and JavaScript code is no exception. Immutable data structures, pure functions, uni-directional data flow... you've probably been hearing these terms.

Immutable.js provides us the data structures and utilities that we need to start introducing this powerful concept of immutability into our applications.

Immutable.js provides many Persistent Immutable data structures including: List, Stack, Map, OrderedMap, Set, OrderedSet and Record.

immutable

Learn how to use Immutable.js

Sometimes our update logic is asynchronous. In this lesson we will investigate two ways in which we can write asynchronous update logic. 

…But, we will also discuss why asynchronous producers should be avoided, and how that can be done by better separating our logic. 

This lesson also demonstrates the “createDraft” and “finishDraft” APIs

Write Asynchronous Producers in Immer and Why You Shouldn’t

In this lesson we will send patches over a WebSocket to our server, and distribute them again from there.

Create a Simple WebSocket Server to Distribute Patches from Immer

In this lesson we’ll learn exactly what’s needed to incorporate redux-observable into an existing React/Redux application. We’ll learn what ‘Epics’ are, and how they receive a stream of actions and return a stream of actions. In-between is where we get to apply side-effects, call out to external services etc etc. In this lesson we’ll demonstrate the ‘async’ nature of epics by responding to an action with another, delay action.

Add redux-observable to an existing Redux project

Redux is a predictable state container for JavaScript apps.
It helps you write applications that behave consistently, run in different environments (client, server, and native), and are easy to test.

redux

In this lesson we’ll learn how to perform an Ajax request to an external API in response to an action in the redux store. We’ll see how, within the epic, we get access to actions after any reducers have been executed and how we can convert that incoming action into a resulting one that will save the data received into the redux store.

Use redux-observable for simple Ajax requests

With redux-observable, we have the power of RxJS at our disposal - this means tasks that would otherwise be complicated and imperative, become simple and declarative. In this lesson we’ll respond to an action by queuing up 2 separate Ajax requests that will execute sequentially. Then we’ll group the results from both into an array and produce a single action from our epic that will save the data into the redux store

Create a queue of Ajax requests with redux-observable and group the results.

When accepting user input and converting it into a request that talks to the outside world, we can often end up in a situation where responses are no longer relevant. This is a common case in type-ahead style input fields - we would only want to call an external search API after the user has stopped typing for a short amount of time. In this lesson we’ll see how we can begin to combine RxJS operators to solve such problems. 

Debounce user input to avoid repeated Ajax requests

Any application that uses external services such as APIs should be able to handle errors gracefully. Often this requires no more that displaying a message to the user and ensuring the application continues to function. In this lesson we’ll look at how we can convert an error from the network into an action that is dispatched into the Redux store, allowing us to show an error message to the user and prevent the application from crashing.

Handle network errors gracefully

Although ‘epics’ in RxJS are often described as ‘actions in, actions out’, there may be times when you need to ‘bail out’ of an action, or to just ignore the current one given some condition. By learning about RxJS’s `filter` Operator, we’ll see how easy it is to do ‘nothing’ when you need to. We’ll also see how the composition techniques available in RXJS allow us to control the UI in a declarative manner.

Filter a stream to exclude empty values

In certain situations, you care more about the final state of the redux store than you do about the particular stream of events coming out of an epic. In this lesson we explore a technique for dispatching actions direction into the store, having the epic execute as they would normally in production, and then assert on the updated store’s state.

Use tests to verify updates to the Redux store

Immutable.js offers methods to break  immutable structures into subsets much like Array--for instance it has the all powerful slice()--and unlike Array it offers functional methods like take() and skip(). You get the best of both the imperative and functional worlds.

Working with Subsets of an Immutable.js Map()

Equality checking deeply nested objects is painful. Fortunately Immutable.js makes this task easy with its .is() and .isSubset() methods. Let's see how we can take two different Immutable Maps() and check for equality.

Equality Checking with .is() and More

Immutable.js offers the fromJS() method to build immutable structures from objects and array. Objects are converted into maps. Arrays are converted into lists. The fromJS() method can also take a reviver function for custom conversions.

Using fromJS() to Convert Plain JavaScript Objects into Immutable Data

Understanding Immutable.js's Map() and List() structures will likely take you as far as you want to go with immutable programming. They have only small semantic differences between each other and the remaining structures in the Immutable.js family. Sequence, however, has one major difference: it's lazy--which opens a new realm of functional possibilities. Let's write a simple sequence to start.

Exploring Sequences and Range() in Immutable.js

Immutable.js iterables offer the reduce() method, a powerful and often misunderstood functional operator on which map(), filter(), groupBy(), etc. are built. The concept is simple: reduce transforms your iterable into something else, that's all. The name is misleading as you may or may not actually "reduce" anything. Let's replicate the groupBy() and filter() methods with reduce to illustrate how it works.

Transforming Immutable Data with Reduce

While Immutable.js offers .is() to confirm value equality between iterables it comes at the cost of referencing each key and value in both objects. For lightning fast equality checks, Immutable.js can produce a hash code based on an iterable's content. If two iterables have the same content, their hash codes will be the same. It's worth noting that this technique is unsuitable for mission critical application development since there is a chance, however slight, that checksums like these might collide. This is outlined here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_(computer_science)

Lightning Fast Immutable.js Equality Checks with Hash Codes

The Immutable.js Record() allows you to model your immutable data much like you would model data with native Javascript classes or objects. It differs from native classes because it cannot be mutated after it's creation and it *always* has a default value. It's an excellent construct in which to piece together your stores, be them Flux or some other storage implementation. Let's quickly create an Immutable Record().

Immutable.Record() as data models

When exploring a new framework or technology, it is nice to have a seed project or sandbox so you can just get in and start playing. Let's build our React playground using npm, browserify, 6to5, and more within WebStorm!

Setting up a React Playground Dev Environment

Immutable.js's Map doesn't promise iteration order after a set() operation. When we need a guarantee for iteration order, we can use OrderedMap. This comes at a slight performance cost, or for you computer science people, it is amortized at an unstable O(log32 N). Let's explore ordering. 

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