next.js/examples/with-redux/README.md

Redux example

How to use

Using create-next-app

Download create-next-app to bootstrap the example:

npm i -g create-next-app
create-next-app --example with-redux with-redux-app

Download manually

Download the example or clone the repo:

curl https://codeload.github.com/zeit/next.js/tar.gz/canary | tar -xz --strip=2 next.js-canary/examples/with-redux
cd with-redux

Install it and run:

npm install
npm run dev

Deploy it to the cloud with now (download)

now

The idea behind the example

This example is based on full example which should probably be used for production. The next.js example with this library can be found here

The reason for this example is to show an easier to follow and extendable way to include Redux in a next.js app.

Usually splitting your app state into pages feels natural but sometimes you'll want to have global state for your app. This is an example on how you can use redux that also works with our universal rendering approach. This is just a way you can do it but it's not the only one.

In the first example we are going to display a digital clock that updates every second. The first render is happening in the server and then the browser will take over. To illustrate this, the server rendered clock will have a different background color than the client one.

Our page is located at pages/index.js so it will map the route /. To get the initial data for rendering we are implementing the static method getInitialProps, initializing the redux store and dispatching the required actions until we are ready to return the initial state to be rendered. Since the component is wrapped with withRedux.js, the component is automatically connected to Redux and wrapped with react-redux Provider, that allows us to access redux state immediately and send the store down to children components so they can access to the state when required.

For safety it is recommended to wrap all pages, no matter if they use Redux or not, so that you should not care about it anymore in all child components.

withRedux function accepts initStore as first argument, all other arguments are internally passed to react-redux connect() function. initStore function will receive initialState as one argument and should return a new instance of redux store each time when called, no memoization needed here.

To pass the initial state from the server to the client we pass it as a prop called initialState so then it's available when the client takes over.

The trick here for supporting universal redux is to separate the cases for the client and the server. When we are on the server we want to create a new store every time, otherwise different users data will be mixed up. If we are in the client we want to use always the same store. That's what we accomplish on store.js

The clock, under components/Clock.js, has access to the state using the connect function from react-redux. In this case Clock is a direct child from the page but it could be deep down the render tree.

The second example, under components/AddCount.js, shows a simple add counter function with a class component implementing a common redux pattern of mapping state and props. Again, the first render is happening in the server and instead of starting the count at 0, it will dispatch an action in redux that starts the count at 1. This continues to highlight how each navigation triggers a server render first and then a client render second, when you navigate between pages.

For simplicity and readability, Reducers, Actions, and Store creators are all in the same file: store.js