reducer.md

Reducer

The location reducer primarily maintains the state of the current pathname and action dispatched (type + payload). That's its core mission.

In addition, it maintains similar state for the previous route on the prev key, as well as the kind of action on the kind key. Here are the kinds you can expect:

• load: if the current route was the first route the app loaded on, load will be true
• redirect: if the current route was reached as the result of a redirect
• next: if the current route was reached by going forward (and not a push)
• back: if the current route was reached by going back
• pop: if the user has used the browser back/forward buttons and we can't determine the direction (which is typical in the browser using createBrowserHistory. If you're using createMemoryHistory, the kind will know if you're going forward or back.)

If the app is utilizing server side rendering, a hasSSR key will be set to true.

Lastly, your routesMap will also be stored for use by, for instance, redux-first-router-link's <Link /> component.

Here's an example of the initialState that will be created for your location reducer:

Example Initial State

const initialState = {
  pathname: '/example/url', 
  type: 'EXAMPLE',
  payload: { param: 'url' },
  prev: {
    pathname: '',
    type: '',
    payload: {}
  },
  kind: undefined,
  hasSSR: isServer() ? true : undefined,
  routesMap: {
    EXAMPLE: '/example/:param',
  }
}

Reducer

And here's a slightly simplified version of the location reducer that will ultimately be powering your app:

const locationReducer = (state = initialState, action = {}) => {
  if (routesMap[action.type]) {
    return {
      pathname: action.meta.location.current.pathname,
      type: action.type,
      payload: { ...action.payload },
      prev: action.meta.location.prev,
      kind: action.meta.location.kind,
      hasSSR: state.hasSSR,
      routesMap
    }
  }

  return state
}

Flow Type

To get a precise sense of what values your location reducer will store, here's its Flow type:

type Location = {
  pathname: string,       // current path + action
  type: string,
  payload: Object

  prev: {                 // previous path + action
    pathname: string,
    type: string,
    payload: Object
  },

  kind?: string,            // extra info
  hasSSR?: true,
  
  routesMap: RoutesMap    // your routes, for reference
}

type RoutesMap = {
  [key: string]: string | RouteObject
}

type RouteObject = {
  path: string,
  capitalizedWords?: boolean,
  coerceNumbers?: boolean,
  toPath?: (param: string, key?: string) => string,
  fromPath?: (path: string, key?: string) => string,
  thunk?: (dispatch: Function, getState: Function) => Promise<any>
}

History State (via createMemoryHistory only)

The location state and the action.meta.location object on the server or in environments where you used createMemoryHistory to create your history (such as React Native) will also maintain information about the history stack. It can be found within the history key, and this is its shape:

type History: {
  index: number,          // index of focused entry/path
  length: number,         // total # of entries/paths
  entries: Entry          // array of objects containting paths
}

type Entry: {
  pathname: string
}

This is different from what the history package maintains in that you can use Redux to reactively respond to its changes. Here's an example:

import React from 'react'
import { connect } from 'react-redux'

const MyComponent = ({ isLast, path }) =>
  isLast ? <div>last</div> : <div>{path}</div>

const mapStateToProps = ({ location: { history } }) => ({
  isLast: history.index === history.length - 1,
  path: history.entries[history.index].pathname
})

export default connect(mapStateToProps)(MyComponent)

By the way, this example also showcases the ultimate goal of Redux First Router: to stay within the "intuitive" workflow of standard Redux patterns.

If you're wondering why such state is limited to createMemoryHistory, it's because it can't be consistently maintained in the browser. Here's why:

would it be possible for createBrowserHistory to also have entries and index? #441

In short, the browser will maintain the history for your website even if you refresh the page, whereas from our app's perspective, if that happens, we'll lose awareness of the history stack. sessionStorage almost can solve the issue, but because of various browser inconsitencies (e.g. when cookies are blocked, you can't recall sessionStorage), it becomes unreliable and therefore not worth it.

When might I have use for it though?

Well, you see the fake browser we made in our playground on webpackbin, right? We emulate the browser's back/next buttons using it. If you have the need to make such a demo or something similar, totally use it.