Introduction
Developing with React hooks is fun for me. I have been developing several libraries. The very first library was a library for global state. It’s naively called “react-hooks-global-state” which turns out to be too long to read.
The initial version of the library was published in Oct 2018. Time has passed since then, I learned a lot, and now v1.0.0 of the library is published.
https://github.com/dai-shi/react-hooks-global-state
This post shows simplified versions of the code step by step. It would help understand what this library is aiming at, while the real code is a bit complex in TypeScript.
Step 1: Global variable
let globalState = {
count: 0,
text: 'hello',
};
Let’s have a global variable like the above. We assume this structure throughout this post. One would create a React hook to read this global variable.
const useGlobalState = () => {
return globalState;
};
This is not actually a React hook because it doesn’t depend on any React primitive hooks.
Now, this is not what we usually want, because it doesn’t re-render when the global variable changes.
Step 2: Re-render on updates
We need to use React useState hook to make it reactive.
const listeners = new Set();
const useGlobalState = () => {
const [state, setState] = useState(globalState);
useEffect(() => {
const listener = () => {
setState(globalState);
};
listeners.add(listener);
listener(); // in case it's already changed
return () => listeners.delete(listener); // cleanup
}, []);
return state;
};
This allows to update React state from outside. If you update the global variable, you need to notify listeners. Let’s create a function for updating.
const setGlobalState = (nextGlobalState) => {
globalState = nextGlobalState;
listeners.forEach(listener => listener());
};
With this, we can change useGlobalState to return a tuple like useState.
const useGlobalState = () => {
const [state, setState] = useState(globalState);
useEffect(() => {
// ...
}, []);
return [state, setGlobalState];
};
Step 3: Container
Usually, the global variable is in a file scope. Let’s put it in a function scope to narrow down the scope a bit and make it more reusable.
const createContainer = (initialState) => {
let globalState = initialState;
const listeners = new Set();
const setGlobalState = (nextGlobalState) => {
globalState = nextGlobalState;
listeners.forEach(listener => listener());
};
const useGlobalState = () => {
const [state, setState] = useState(globalState);
useEffect(() => {
const listener = () => {
setState(globalState);
};
listeners.add(listener);
listener(); // in case it's already changed
return () => listeners.delete(listener); // cleanup
}, []);
return [state, setGlobalState];
};
return {
setGlobalState,
useGlobalState,
};
};
We don’t go in detail about TypeScript in this post,
but this form allows to annotate types of useGlobalState
by inferring types of initialState.
Step 4: Scoped access
Although we can create multiple containers, usually we put several items in a global state.
Typical global state libraries have some functionality to scope only a part of the state. For example, React Redux uses selector interface to get a derived value from a global state.
We take a simpler approach here,
which is to use a string key of a global state.
In our example, it’s like count and text.
const createContainer = (initialState) => {
let globalState = initialState;
const listeners = Object.fromEntries(Object.keys(initialState).map(key => [key, new Set()]));
const setGlobalState = (key, nextValue) => {
globalState = { ...globalState, [key]: nextValue };
listeners[key].forEach(listener => listener());
};
const useGlobalState = (key) => {
const [state, setState] = useState(globalState[key]);
useEffect(() => {
const listener = () => {
setState(globalState[key]);
};
listeners[key].add(listener);
listener(); // in case it's already changed
return () => listeners[key].delete(listener); // cleanup
}, []);
return [state, (nextValue) => setGlobalState(key, nextValue)];
};
return {
setGlobalState,
useGlobalState,
};
};
We omit the use of useCallback in this code for simplicity, but it’s generally recommended for a library.
Step 5: Functional Updates
React useState allows functional updates.
Let’s implement this feature.
// ...
const setGlobalState = (key, nextValue) => {
if (typeof nextValue === 'function') {
globalState = { ...globalState, [key]: nextValue(globalState[key]) };
} else {
globalState = { ...globalState, [key]: nextValue };
}
listeners[key].forEach(listener => listener());
};
// ...
Step 6: Reducer
Those who are familiar with Redux may prefer reducer interface. React hook useReducer also has basically the same interface.
const createContainer = (reducer, initialState) => {
let globalState = initialState;
const listeners = Object.fromEntries(Object.keys(initialState).map(key => [key, new Set()]));
const dispatch = (action) => {
const prevState = globalState;
globalState = reducer(globalState, action);
Object.keys((key) => {
if (prevState[key] !== globalState[key]) {
listeners[key].forEach(listener => listener());
}
});
};
// ...
return {
useGlobalState,
dispatch,
};
};
Step 7: Concurrent Mode
In order to get benefits from Concurrent Mode, we need to use React state instead of an external variable. The current solution to it is to link a React state to our global state.
The implementation is very tricky, but in essence we create a hook to create a state and link it.
const useGlobalStateProvider = () => {
const [state, dispatch] = useReducer(patchedReducer, globalState);
useEffect(() => {
linkedDispatch = dispatch;
// ...
}, []);
const prevState = useRef(state);
Object.keys((key) => {
if (prevState.current[key] !== state[key]) {
// we need to pass the next value to listener
listeners[key].forEach(listener => listener(state[key]));
}
});
prevState.current = state;
useEffect(() => {
globalState = state;
}, [state]);
};
The patchedReducer is required to allow setGlobalState
to update global state.
The useGlobalStateProvider hook should be used in a stable component
such as an app root component.
Note that this is not a well-known technique, and there might be some limitations. For instance, invoking listeners in render is not actually recommended.
To support Concurrent Mode in a proper way, we would need core support.
Currently, useMutableSource hook is proposed in
this RFC.
Closing notes
This is mostly how react-hooks-global-state
is implemented.
The real code in the library is a bit more complex in TypeScript,
contains getGlobalState for reading global state from outside, and
has limited support for Redux middleware and DevTools.
Finally, I have developed some other libraries around global state and React context, as listed below.