ReactJS

State Management with React: Client State and Beyond

Published Jun 28, 2023

Updated Oct 12, 2023

6 min read

This article was written over 18 months ago and may contain information that is out of date. Some content may be relevant but please refer to the relevant official documentation or available resources for the latest information.

Introduction

State management has long been a hotly debated subject in the React world. Best practices have continued to evolve, and there’s still a lot of confusion around the subject. In this article, we are going to dive into what tools we might want to use for solving common problems we face in modern web application development. There are different types of state and different types of ways to store and manage your application state. For example, you might have some local client state in a component that controls a dropdown, and you might also have a global store that contains authenticated user state. Aside from those typical examples, on some pages of your website, you might store some state in the URL.

For quite a while, we’ve been leaning into global client state in single-page app land. This is what state management tools like Redux and other similar libraries help us out with. In this post, we will cover these different strategies in more detail so that we can try to make the best decisions going forward regarding state management in our applications.

Local and global client state

In this section, we'll discuss the differences between local and global client state, when to use each, and some popular libraries that can help you manage them effectively.

When to use local client state

Local client state is best suited for managing state that is specific to a single component or a small group of related components. Examples of local state include form inputs, component visibility, and UI element states like button toggles. Using local state keeps the component self-contained, making it easier to understand and maintain. In general, it's a good idea to start with local state and only use global state when you have a clear need for it. This can help keep your code simple and easy to understand.

When to use global client state

Global client state is useful when you have state that needs to be accessed by multiple unrelated components, or when the state is complex and would benefit from a more carefully designed API. Common examples of global state include user authentication, theme preferences, and application-wide settings. By centralizing this state, you can easily share it across the entire application, making it more efficient and consistent.

If you’re building out a feature that has some very complex state requirements, this could also be a good case for using a “global” state management library. Truth is, you can still use one of these libraries to manage state that is actually localized to your feature. Most of these libraries support creating multiple stores. For example, if I was building a video chat client like Google Meets with a lot of different state values that are constantly changing, it might be a good idea to create a store to manage the state for a video call. Most state management libraries support more features than what you get out of the box with React, which can help design a clean and easy to reason about modules and APIs for scenarios where the state is complex.

Popular libraries for global state management

There are a lot of great libraries for managing state in React out there these days. I think deciding which might be best for you or your project is mostly a matter of preference.

Redux and MobX are a couple of options that have been around for quite a long time. Redux has gained a reputation for being overly complex and requiring a lot of boilerplate code. The experience is actually much improved these days thanks to the Redux Toolkit library. MobX provides an easy-to-use API that revolves around reactive data/variables. These are both mature and battle-tested options that are always worth considering.

Meta also has a state management named Recoil that provides a pretty easy-to-use API that revolves around the concept of atoms and selectors. I don’t see this library being used a ton in the wild, but I think it’s worth mentioning.

A couple of the more popular new players on the block are named jotai and zustand. I think after the Redux hangover, these libraries showed up as a refreshing oasis of simplicity. Both of these libraries have grown a ton in popularity due to their small byte footprints and simple, straightforward APIs.

Context is not evil

The React Context API, like Redux, has also been stigmatized over the years to the point where many developers have their pitchforks out, declaring that you should never use it. We leaned on it for state management a bit too much for a while, and now it is a forbidden fruit. I really dislike these hard all-or-nothing stances though. We just need to be a little bit more considerate about when and where we choose to use it.

Typically, React Context is best for storing, and making available global state that doesn’t change much. Some of the most common use cases are things like themes, authentication, localization, and user preferences. Contrary to popular belief, only components (and their children) that use that context (const context = useContext(someContext);) are re-rendered in the event of a state change, not all of the children below the context provider.

Storing state in the URL

The most underused and underrated tool in the web app state management tool belt is using the URL to store state. Storing state in the URL can be beneficial for several reasons, such as enabling users to bookmark and share application state, improving SEO, and simplifying navigation. The classic example for this is filters on an e-commerce website. A good user experience would be that the user can select some filters to show only the products that they are looking for and then be able to share that URL with a friend and them see the same exact results. Before you add some state to a page, I think it’s always worth considering the question: “Should I be able to set this state from the URL?”.

Tools for managing URL state

We typically have a couple of different tools available to use for managing URL state. Built-in browser APIs like the URL class and URLSearchParams. Both of these APIs allow you to easily parse out parts of a URL. Most often, you will store URL state in the parameters.

In most React applications, you will typically have a routing library available to help with URL and route state management as well. React Router has multiple hooks and other APIs for managing URL state like useLocation that returns a parsed object of the current URL state.

Keeping URL and application state in sync

The tricky part of storing state in the URL is when you need to keep local application state in sync with the URL values. Let’s look at an example component with a simple name component that stores a piece of state called name.

import React, { useState, useEffect } from 'react';
import { useLocation, useHistory } from 'react-router-dom';

function MyComponent() {
	const location = useLocation();
	const history = useHistory();
	const [name, setName] = useState('');

	useEffect(() => {
		// Update the name state when the URL changes
		const searchParams = new URLSearchParams(location.search);
		setName(searchParams.get('name') || '');
	}, [location]);

	function handleNameChange(event) {
		setName(event.target.value);
		// Update the URL when the name changes
		history.push(`/my-component?name=${event.target.value}`);
	}

	return (
		<div>
			<input type="text" value={name} onChange={handleNameChange} />
		</div>
	);
}

The general idea is to pull the initial value off of the URL when the component mounts and set the state value. After that, in our event handler, we make sure to update the URL state as well as our local React state.

Moving state to the server

Moving web application state to the server can be beneficial in several scenarios. For example, when you have a complex state that is difficult to manage on the client-side. By moving the state to the server, you can simplify the client-side code and reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred between the client and server. This can be useful for applications that have a lot of business logic or complex data structures. In most cases if there’s some logic or other work that you can move off of your client web application and onto the server that is a win.

Conclusion

State management is a crucial aspect of building modern web applications with React. By understanding the different types of state and the tools available for managing them, you can make informed decisions about the best approach for your specific use case. Remember to consider local and global client state, URL-based state, and server-side state when designing your application's state management strategy.

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About the author(s)

Dane Grant
JavaScript developer building things on web, native, and server environments. Free time filled with reading, cooking, dog, sports, comedy, and music.
@danecando @danecando

How to test React custom hooks and components with Vitest

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Installation and configuration Let’s see how we can use Vitest for testing React custom hooks and components. But first, we will need to create a new project with Vite! If you already have an existing project, you can skip this step. ` Follow the prompts to create a new React project successfully. For testing, we need the following dependencies installed: Vitest as the unit testing framework JSDOM as the DOM environment for running our tests React Testing Library as the React testing utilities. To do so, we run the following command: ` Once we have those packages installed, we need to configure the vite.config.js file to run tests. By default, some of the extra configs we need to set up Vitest are not available in the Vite config types, so we will need the vite.config.ts file to reference Vitest types by adding /// reference types=”vitest” /> at the top of the file. Add the following code to the vite.config.ts ` We set globals to true because, by default, Vitest does not provide global APIs for explicitness. So with this set to true, we can use keywords like describe, test and it without needing to import them. To get TypeScript working with the global APIs, add vitest/globals to the types field in your tsconfig.json. ` The environment property tells Vitest which environment to run the test. We are using jsdom as the environment. The root property tells Vitest the root folder from where it should start looking for test files. We should add a script for running the test in package.json ` With all that configured, we can now start writing unit tests for customs hooks and React components. Writing test for custom hooks Let’s write a test for a simple useCounter hook that takes an initial value and returns the value, an increment function and a decrement function. ` We can write a test to check the default return values of the hook for value as below: ` To test if the hook works when we increment the value, we can use the act() method from @testing-library/react to simulate the increment function, as shown in the below test case: ` Kindly Note that you can't destructure the reactive properties of the result.current instance, or they will lose their reactivity. Testing hooks with asynchronous logic Now let’s test a more complex logic that contains asynchronous logic. Let’s write a useProducts hook that fetches data from an external api and return that value ` Now, let’s see what the test looks like: ` In the above example, we had to spy on the global fetch API, so that we can mock its return value. We wrapped that inside a beforeAll so that this runs before any test in this file. Then we added an afterAll method and called the mockRestore() to run after all test cases have been completed and return all mock implementations to their original function. We can also use the mockClear() method to clear all the mock's information, such as the number of calls and the mock's results. This method is handy when mocking the same function with different return values for different tests. We usually use mockClear() in beforeEach() or afterEach() methods to ensure our test is isolated completely. Then in our test case, we used a waitFor(), to wait for the return value to be resolved. Writing test for components Like Jest, Vitest provides assertion methods (matchers) to use with the expect methods for asserting values, but to test DOM elements easily, we will need to make use of custom matchers such as toBeInTheDocument() or toHaveTextContent(). Luckily the Vitest API is mostly compatible with the Jest API, making it possible to reuse many tools originally built for Jest. For such methods, we can install the @testing-library/jest-dom package and extend the expect method from Vitest to include the assertion methods in matchers from this package. ` After installing the jest-dom testing library package, create a file named vitest-setup.ts on the root of the project and import the following into the project to extend js-dom custom matchers: ` Since we are using typescript, we also need to include our setup file in our tsconfig.json: ` In vite.config.ts, we need to add the vitest-setup.ts file to the test.setupFiles field: ` Now let’s test the Products.tsx component: ` We start by spying and mocking the useProducts hook with vi.spyOn() method from Vitest: ` Now, we render the Products component using the render method from @testing-library/react and assert that the component renders the list of products as expected and also the product has the title as follows: ` In the above code, we use the render method from @testing-library/react to render the component and this returns some useful methods we can use to extract information from the component like getByTestId and getByText. The getByTestId method will retrieve the element whose data-testid attribute value equals product-list, and we can then assert its children to equal the length of our mocked items array. Using data-testid attribute values is a good practice for identifying a DOM element for testing purposes and avoiding affecting the component's implementation in production and tests. We also used the getByText method to find a text in the rendered component. We were able to call the toBeInTheDocument() because we extended the matchers to work with Vitest earlier. Here is what the full test looks like: ` Conclusion In this article, we delved into the world of testing React hooks and components using Vitest, a versatile JavaScript unit testing framework. We walked through the installation and configuration process, ensuring compatibility with React, JSDOM, and React Testing Library. The comprehensive guide covered writing tests for custom hooks, including handling asynchronous logic, and testing React components, leveraging custom matchers for DOM assertions. By adopting Vitest, developers can streamline the testing process for their React applications, whether powered by Vite or not. The framework's seamless integration with Vite projects simplifies the setup, reducing the complexities associated with other testing tools like Jest....

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The drawer at the top represents the highest priority, so when you open the cabinet, you first access the styles in that drawer. If a style isn't found there, you move down to the next drawer until you find what you need. Traditionally, CSS styles cascade by specificity (i.e., more specific selectors win) and source order (styles declared later in the file override earlier ones). Cascade layers add a new, structured way to manage styles within a single origin—giving you control over which layer takes precedence without worrying about specificity. This is useful when you need to control the order of styles from different sources, like: * Resets (e.g., Normalize) * Third-party libraries (e.g., Tailwind CSS) * Themes and overrides You define cascade layers using the @layer rule, assigning styles to a specific layer. The order in which layers are defined determines their priority in the cascade. Styles in later layers override those in earlier layers, regardless of specificity or order within the file. Here’s a quick example: ` In this example, since the theme layer comes after base, it overrides the paragraph text color to dark blue—even though both declarations have the same specificity. How Do CSS Layers Work? Cascade layers allow you to assign rules to specific named layers, and then control the order of those layers. This means that: * Layers declared later take priority over earlier ones. * You don’t need to increase selector specificity to override styles from another layer—just place it in a higher-priority layer. * Styles outside of any layer will always take precedence over layered styles unless explicitly ordered. Let’s break it down with a more detailed example. ` In this example: * The unlayered audio rule takes precedence because it’s not part of the reset layer, even though the audio[controls] rule has higher specificity. * Without the cascade layers feature, specificity and order-of-appearance would normally decide the winner, but now, we have clear control by defining styles in or outside of a layer. Use Case: Overriding Styles with Layers Cascade layers become especially useful when working with frameworks and third-party libraries. Say you’re using a CSS framework that defines a keyframe animation, but you want to override it in your custom styles. Normally, you might have to rely on specificity or carefully place your custom rules at the end. With layers, this is simplified: ` There’s some new syntax in this example. Multiple layers can be defined at once. This declares up front the order of the layers. With the first line defined, we could even switch the order of the framework and custom layers to achieve the same result. Here, the custom layer comes after framework, so the translate animation takes precedence, no matter where these rules appear in the file. Cascade Layers in Tailwind CSS Tailwind CSS, a utility-first CSS framework, uses cascade layers starting with version 3. Tailwind organizes its layers in a way that gives you flexibility and control over third-party utilities, customizations, and overrides. In Tailwind, the framework styles are divided into distinct layers like base, components, and utilities. These layers can be reordered or combined with your custom layers. Here's an example: ` Tailwind assigns these layers in a way that utilities take precedence over components, and components override base styles. You can use Tailwind’s @layer directive to extend or override any of these layers with your custom rules. 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When used with frameworks like Tailwind CSS, you can create clean, structured styles that are easy to override and customize, giving you full control of your project’s styling hierarchy. It really shines for managing complex projects and integrating with third-party CSS libraries....

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State Management with React: Client State and Beyond

Introduction

Local and global client state

When to use local client state

When to use global client state

Popular libraries for global state management

Context is not evil

Storing state in the URL

Tools for managing URL state

Keeping URL and application state in sync

Moving state to the server

Conclusion

Dane Grant

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