I have a React component that dispatches a redux state change in its componentWillMount
function. The reason is that when the component is loaded, it needs to get the id
from the url (powered by react-router
), and trigger an action that sets up the state with that id
's data.
Here is the component:
class Editor extends React.Component {
componentWillMount() {
const { dispatch, params } = this.props
dispatch(editItem(params.id))
}
render() {
const item = this.props.item
console.log("Editing", item)
}
}
export default connect(state => ({item: state.item}))(Editor)
Here's the catch: render
is getting called twice. item
is undefined on the first call, and valid on the second. Ideally, it should only be called once this.props.item
actually exists (after the editItem
action has been dispatched and run).
According to the React docs: "If you call setState
within this method, render()
will see the updated state and will be executed only once despite the state change."
In redux, dispatch
is the equivalent of calling setState
, as it results in a state change. However, I'm guessing something in the way connect
works is still causing render
to be called twice.
Is there a way around this besides adding a line like if (!item) return;
?
One thing you might do is create a higher order component that handles the basic pattern of loading a different component (or no component) before the required props are loaded.
export const LoaderWrapper = function(hasLoaded, Component, LoaderComponent, onLoad) {
return props => {
if (hasLoaded(props)) {
return <Component {...props} />
}
else {
if (onLoad) onLoad(props)
return { LoaderComponent ? <LoaderComponent /> : null }
}
}
}
Then you can wrap your component before connecting it to get the desired behaviour.
export default connect(state => ({item: state.item}))(LoaderWrapper(
((props) => !!props.item),
Editor,
null,
(props) => props.dispatch(editItem(props.params.id))
))
You might want to add some currying magic to make sure you can compose these kinds of wrapper functions more nicely. Take a look at recompose for more info.
It looks like there's already an issue in the react-redux library.
https://github.com/rackt/react-redux/issues/210
What does editItem do? Does it add item to the redux state or is it there already?
If it is adding I imagine what is happening is that a render cycle happens with the current props, ie item being blank.
Then it gets rendered again when the props have changed, via setting the item.
One approach to fixing this sort of thing is to create a higher order component that wraps Editor and calls the dispatch action the rendering though is set either to a loading screen or and empty div until item is set. That way you can be assured that Editor will have an item.
But without knowing what editItem does it's sort of hard to know. Maybe you could paste the code for that?