ReduxAsyncConnect for React Router

How do you usually request data and store it to redux state? You create actions that do async jobs to load data, create reducer to save this data to redux state, then connect data to your component or container.

Usually it's very similar routine tasks.

Also, usually we want data to be preloaded. Especially if you're building universal app, or you just want pages to be solid, don't jump when data was loaded.

This package consist of 2 parts: one part allows you to delay containers rendering until some async actions are happening. Another stores your data to redux state and connect your loaded data to your container.

Installation & Usage

Using npm:

$ npm install redux-async-connect

import { Router, browserHistory } from 'react-router';
import { ReduxAsyncConnect, asyncConnect, reducer as reduxAsyncConnect } from 'redux-async-connect'
import React from 'react'
import { render } from 'react-dom'
import { createStore, combineReducers } from 'redux';

// 1. Connect your data, similar to react-redux @connect
@asyncConnect({
  lunch: (params, helpers) => Promise.resolve({id: 1, name: 'Borsch'})
})
class App extends React.Component {
  render() {
    // 2. access data as props
    const lunch = this.props.lunch
    return (
      <div>{lunch.name}</div>
    )
  }
}

// 3. Connect redux async reducer
const store = createStore(combineReducers({reduxAsyncConnect}), window.__data);

// 4. Render `Router` with ReduxAsyncConnect middleware
render((
  <Provider store={store} key="provider">
    <Router render={(props) => <ReduxAsyncConnect {...props}/>} history={browserHistory}>
      <Route path="/" component={App}/>
    </Router>
  </Provider>
), el)

Server

import { renderToString } from 'react-dom/server'
import { match, RoutingContext } from 'react-router'
import { ReduxAsyncConnect, loadOnServer, reducer as reduxAsyncConnect } from 'redux-async-connect'
import createHistory from 'history/lib/createMemoryHistory';
import {Provider} from 'react-redux';
import { createStore, combineReducers } from 'redux';

app.get('*', (req, res) => {
  const history = createHistory();
  const store = createStore(combineReducers({reduxAsyncConnect}));

  match({ routes, location: req.url }, (err, redirect, renderProps) => {

    // 1. load data
    loadOnServer(renderProps, store).then(() => {

      // 2. use `ReduxAsyncConnect` instead of `RoutingContext` and pass it `renderProps`
      const appHTML = renderToString(
        <Provider store={store} key="provider">
          <ReduxAsyncConnect {...renderProps} />
        </Provider>
      )

      // 3. render the Redux initial data into the server markup
      const html = createPage(appHTML, store)
      res.send(html)
    })
  })
})

function createPage(html, store) {
  return `
    <!doctype html>
    <html>
      <body>
        <div id="app">${html}</div>

        <!-- its a Redux initial data -->
        <script dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{__html: `window.__data=${serialize(store.getState())};`}} charSet="UTF-8"/>
      </body>
    </html>
  `
}

API

Comparing with other libraries

There are some solutions of problem described above:

AsyncProps It solves the same problem, but it doesn't work with redux state. Also it's significantly more complex inside, because it contains lots of logic to connect data to props. It uses callbacks against promises...
react-fetcher It's very simple library too. But it provides you only interface for decorating your components and methods to fetch data for them. It doesn't integrated with React Router or Redux. So, you need to write you custom logic to delay routing transition for example.
react-resolver Works similar, but isn't integrated with redux.

Redux Async Connect uses awesome Redux to keep all fetched data in state. This integration gives you agility:

you can react on fetching actions like data loading or load success in your own reducers
you can create own middleware to handle Redux Async Connect actions
you can connect to loaded data anywhere else, just using simple redux @connect
finally, you can debug and see your data using Redux Dev Tools

Also it's integrated with React Router to prevent routing transition until data is loaded.