React JS State Management: Top 4 Third Party Libraries for Web Applications
ReactJs State Management in web applications has increased in popularity over the years and as a result, there are multiple in-built options available. And as typical, as an application grows and the complexity increases, third-party libraries sometimes provide better functionality than the original developer.
Third-Party Libraries for Web Application Development
State management is a hot topic in the web application development community. There are quite a few libraries that exist, and each of them has its own benefits and disadvantages.
This article will help you decide which framework to use for your next project. We will take a closer look at Redux, MobX and Recoil to manage the state.
Redux:
Redux is the most mature compared to other libraries listed. It heavily relies on immutability and maintains a single global store for the data, and a reducer function will receive the actions dispatched from the components.
For immutability, it returns a copy of the state which is useful in redo and undo operations. Thus we can replay actions throughout the lifecycle.
MobX:
Is also considered to be a very good alternative for Redux. While Redux is functional, MobX follows an observer/observable pattern. There will be an observable data model, and components will be marked as observers. MobX continually monitors for changes and re-renders as data is manipulated and ES6 proxies track all changes.
MobX State Tree:
MobX State Tree sits on top of MobX and all models are observable. Hence an observer component will re-render when the underlying observable model changes. All changes are identified as a stream of patches and snapshots, or sections of the entire tree and they can be saved or reloaded.
Recoil:
Recoil, created by Facebook is the newest entry to this list of libraries and it can organize data into graph models. It is similar to React because its APIs combine Estate and Context APIs. This tends to scale better in performance because it re-renders only the components that subscribed to a slice of data when that data changes.
Comparison of ReactJs State Management Libraries
Redux
- Used since 2015
- Smaller size
- Easy debugging
- Largely relies on immutability
- Everything has to be explicit
MobX
- Less code
- Regular mutable code
- No reducers or actions to be wired
- Lower community support because of less usage
- Releases IE11 and below are not supported
MobX State Tree
- Data is inconsistent in shape
- Simple to capture JSON based snapshots
- Different learning methodology
- Performance is impacted when data is changed frequently
Recoil
- Similar to react
- Better performance
- User community needs to be increased which is a challenge because of its newness
Here’s a table for your convenience. Share it with your peers!
Why is React State Management Necessary?
React applications are made up of components that manage their state. This works well for applications with a small number of components, but managing shared states across components becomes more difficult as the application scales.
In an eCommerce application, the status of multiple components changes when a product is purchased.
- The product gets added to the shopping list
- The product is added to purchase history
- Trigger count of purchased products
When developers don’t have scalability in mind while building an application, it’s difficult to figure out what’s going on when something goes wrong, thus state management is useful.
The management of state for frontend developers is the biggest challenge companies face with React applications because it isn’t built to handle the complexity of large applications, which is why your project may require outside vendors. If you are contemplating on whether or not to outsource your project please give Payoda a call and we’d love to discuss it!
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Authored by: Starlin Daniel Raj
