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I have very large and complicated objects like userInfo, chatInfo, and etc as in objects & arrays with very large and nested information. The thing is in my react app every time I refresh my page the redux state gets reset and I have to call all those API's again.

I did some research on this topic. I checked Dan Abramov's egghead tutorial on redux. What he does is maintain the redux state in localStorage of the browser and updated the localStorage after every 100 or 500 ms. I feel as if this is a code smell.

Continuously watching the localStorage state and updating it, wouldn't it effect the performance of the browser. I mean wasn't this on of the reasons Angular 1 failed because it continuously kept on watching state variables and after a while if the site was kept live in the browser it just slowed down. Because our script continuously kept on checking the state of the variables. i feel as if we are doing the same thing here.

If maintaining the redux state in localStorage is the right approach can someone tell me why so? And if not is there a better approach?

This is not a duplicate of How can I persist redux state tree on refresh? because I am asking for advice whether persisting state in local storage is a code smell or not

Adeel Imran
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    I think it is right approach to store in localStorage. You dont watch localStorage I think, you just update it. You have let's say 20 variables you want to store in localStorage, you update localStorage only when the update of these variables in your page happens. – croraf Dec 26 '17 at 19:07
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    To me, refreshing the browser running an SPA equates to restarting a program on your computer. I think in most cases it's a good thing that the state is cleared and APIs are called again on refresh. How else are your users going to reset your page if it goes into a weird state? Managing a global state over a long period of time, like you're suggesting, is in my opinion very risky and should be avoided. – darksmurf Dec 31 '17 at 02:30
  • `redux-persist` is the thing – ps-aux Jan 06 '18 at 11:48
  • Possible duplicate of [How can I persist redux state tree on refresh?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37195590/how-can-i-persist-redux-state-tree-on-refresh) – Michael Freidgeim Aug 22 '19 at 23:09
  • This is not a duplicate of https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37195590/how-can-i-persist-redux-state-tree-on-refresh because I am asking for advice whether persisting state in local storage is a code smell or not @michael-freidgeim – Adeel Imran Aug 23 '19 at 08:58
  • See (quite opinionated, but still informative ) post [Please Stop Using Local Storage](https://dev.to/rdegges/please-stop-using-local-storage-1i04) – Michael Freidgeim Aug 23 '19 at 09:26

9 Answers9

11

I think using localStorage is your best option here, since it seems the data you are storing there is needed on the client. If the data is not changing, you shouldn't need to repeatedly query, or watch, the localStorage.

Another thing you can do is wrap a closure around your localStorage, so that you are not always hitting disk when retrieving your "large" data. Every browser implements localStorage differently, so there are no guarantees on consistent behaviour or I/O performance.

This also adds a simple layer of abstraction which hides the implementation, and controls everything related to your user data in one place.

Here is a simple example of user profile data closure: 

// UserProfile.js
var UserProfile = (function() {
  var userData = {};

  var getUserData = function() {
    if (!userData) { 
      userData = JSON.parse(localStorage.getItem("userData"));
    }
    return userData;
  };

  var setUserData = function(userData) {
    localStorage.setItem("userData", JSON.stringify(userData));
    userData = JSON.parse(localStorage.getItem("userData"));
  };

  return {
    getUserData: getUserData,
    setUserData: setUserData
  }
})();

export default UserProfile;

Set the user data object: This will overwrite the localStorage, and set the local variable inside the closure.

import UserProfile from '/UserProfile';
UserProfile.setUserData(newUserData);

Get the user data object: This will get the data from the local variable inside the closure, or else go get it from localStorage if it is not set.

import UserProfile from '/UserProfile';
var userData = UserProfile.getUserData();

The idea here is to load data into memory, from localStorage, the first time, when your app loads, or on the first API call. Until such a time when the user profile data changes, (i.e. a user updates their profile, for example), then you would query the API again, and update the data again via the UserProfile.setUserData(..) call.

grizzthedj
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6

The question is at what point you need to achieve persistent. I feel that the answer in your case is on a page reload. So if you are worry about performance I'll say: * Update the localStorage only when the state changes. Inside your reducer when you update the state. * Read from localStorage when you boot the app.

(This way you write only when the state changes and you read only once)

P.S. I'll recommend https://github.com/rt2zz/redux-persist package for achieving persistent in Redux apps.

Krasimir
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5

I would only do this as a weak cache and would not rely on it. Local storage is limited (5mb on Chrome e.g.), and may not be available. You'd have to carefully verify that your data was written.

As others have said, you wouldn't be watching localStorage you'd be periodically flushing the store. But I would agree that it seems like a rather coarse hack to blindly assume that all of your state was appropriate to persist in local storage. As with all caching solutions, you need to carefully consider the implications (freshness, expiration, etc.). It sounds like you might want to do this incrementally - pick off a few low-hanging pieces of fruit that are appropriate for caching and consider the implications of caching that state in local storage.

john_omalley
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4

Try redux-persist you can do optimistic persistence, agnostic of the underlying platform (web/mobile).

If you still find performance is a bottleneck. You can do either of the following in steps.

Cache Middleware

Create a middleware that listen's in on changes and records them but only flushes them out every 5 seconds.

Attach an event handler to window.beforeunload to detect user navigating away or closing the browser to flush changes

Persistence Strategy

To persist the data you can use a either of the two strategies below.

  • Store it in localStorage if there is no performance bottle neck.
  • Send a JSON blob to server like file-upload. Fetch last JSON state when app loads and persist locally.

I'd suggest you start of with using redux-persist. If there is still a performance bottle neck then use a cache middleware along with one of the two persistence strategies.

Muhammad Adeel
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2

I think that in most cases you want to persist your state in localStorage after certain action(s) happens. At least that's always been the case in the projects where I've needed to persist it.

So, if you are using redux-saga, redux-observable or redux-cycles for orchestrating your side-effects you can easily make that side-effect (persisting the state into localStorage) happen whenever one of those actions take place. I think that's a much better approach than "randomly" persisting the data based on a time-interval.

Josep
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2

It seems that your understanding of watching state is that you have some kind interval which will keep checking your state and updating it in localStorage. However, I think you can achieve this same thing by updating your localStorage in the react lifecycle method componentDidUpdate. This method will fire every time your component updates, so you can take advantage of it and update your localStorage every time it fires without incurring any performance hits.

Chaim Friedman
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2

One option is to load the data in INITIAL_STATE 

window.__INITIAL_STATE__ = { ...state... }

and load the reducer:

window.__APP_STATE__.__REDUCERS__.push(reducer)
mlhDev
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Chandan
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2

It is completely ok to persist state in large redux+react applications.

Regarding angular1, watchers and digest cycle though on every state change even if you rehydrate state not all components are rendered because of redux connect API and vrtualDOM of react.

You can check:

Performance should not be your primary concern. If it comes to that normalise your state and only persist important information like drafts etc(Less info-fewer rehydrations).

The bigger problem with this kind of setup is usually if you have any background sync or socket updates in the app. Having multiple tabs of browser causes async writes to local DB causing to overwrite with previous states.

Here is a thin wrapper on top of it for cross tab sync redux-persist-crosstab

You can check some of these implementations in mattermost webapp and how they use it for realtime app.

They go through some hoops for extra stability and performance - link to store file in mattermost webapp

Sudheer
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1

I think you can use npm module called redux-storage. It provides Persistence layer for redux with flexible backends. You can combine redux-storage with any redux-storage-engine you want. And in my view you can combine this with redux-storage-engine-sessionstorage assuming you will only want to share and save information till browser is open. No need to bloat browser with localStorage. You will need extra javascript support for this to get it clear.

Redux-storage will trigger load and save actions after every state changes. Providing all more flexibility about what to do in case of load and save. Also if you don't to save some state changes then you define array of state which you want to filter out.

cauchy
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