Blog
Recreating redux-toolkit’s createSlice
What is a slice?
In redux, a slice is a "slice" of your redux state object.
store.getState();
/*
{
token: '', // this is a slice
users: {}, // this is a slice
todos: {}, // this is a slice
}
*/
Actions and reducers per slice
Splitting up reducer logic is an import concept in redux where we compose multiple reducers into one big reducer using combineReducers. For every slice, there is a single corresponding reducer. When building store data inside redux, it is very common to build a set of actions and a reducer that responds to those actions.
What is createSlice?
createSlice is a higher-order function that accepts the slice name (e.g. token, user, todos), a set of reducers, and returns a single reducer along with the action creators for that reducer. The goal of createSlice is to reduce the boilerplate required to add data to redux the canonical way.
The createSlice we know of today from redux-toolkit was inspired by autodux. I helped build the original implementation in redux-toolkit and have been using it for every redux project since. It is a powerful helper function that has gained a ton of popularity in the redux community.
However, it is common for engineers learning redux for the first time to be completely overwhelmed by the terms and phrases used by the redux community. This is exacerbated by the fact that every reducer is now wrapped by createSlice.
So let's build it from the ground up to really understand it!
BYO createSlice
In order to build our own createSlice we need to build a couple of other helper functions first.
Note: as a learning guide, all of these implementations are simplified versions of the official ones. If you dig into the redux-toolkit source code, you'll see that most of the code are typings and embellishments on top of the code written in this article.
For our example usage we will be recreating redux's example todo list.
type ToDo {
id: string;
text: string;
completed: boolean;
}BYO createAction
createAction is a simple helper function that accepts a string and returns an action creator.
function createAction<P = any>(type: string) {
const actionCreator = (payload?: P) => {
return {
type,
payload,
};
};
// This overrides the default stringification method so when we stringify the
// action creator we get the action type
actionCreator.toString = () => `${type}`;
return actionCreator;
}Example usage for createAction
const addTodo = createAction<ToDo>('ADD_TODO');
addTodo({ id: '1', text: 'build my own createAction', completed: true });
/*
{
type: 'ADD_TODO',
payload: { id: '1', text: 'build my own createAction', completed: true },
}
*/
BYO createReducer
createReducer is a function that accepts an object where the keys are the action type and the values are the reducer.
The redux-toolkit version of createReducer leverages immer to handle state updates. I won't go into the details of how immer works but just know that it is a clever way for the end-developer to appear to mutate their state object while under-the-hood immer actually handles updates to the state in an immutable, redux-friendly manner.
For the purposes of our demonstration, we will not be using immer.
// For the purposes of this demonstration we're removing types because otherwise it would dramatically
// increase the complexity of this code.
function createReducer(initialState, reducers) {
/*
This is a reducer function that selects one of the other reducer functions based on the action
type (key). When we call this reducer, we do a lookup on our `reducers` object by the key
which, in this case, is the `action.type`. If there's a match we call that reducer
function with the `action.payload`.
If our `reducers` object was { increment: (state, payload) => state += 1 }
and the reducer function received: state = 0, action = { type: 'increment' }
we match the action type with the reducers key 'increment', call that reducer function,
and the new state value would be `1`.
*/
const reducer = (state = initialState, action) => {
const caseReducer = reducers[action.type];
if (!caseReducer) {
return state;
}
// Note that we are not passing the entire action object to each reducer,
// simply the payload
return caseReducer(state, action.payload);
};
return reducer;
}Example usage for createReducer
import { createStore } from 'redux';
type State = ToDo[];
const addTodo = createAction<ToDo>('ADD_TODO');
const toggleTodo = createAction<string>('TOGGLE_TODO');
const reducer = createReducer([], {
addTodo: (state: State, payload: ToDo) => {
return [...state, action.payload];
},
toggleTodo: (state, payload: string) => {
return state.map((todo) => {
// When we find the todo id that matches the payload we toggle the completed state
if (todo.id === payload) {
return { ...todo, completed: !todo.completed };
}
return todo;
});
},
});
const store = createStore(reducer, []);
store.dispatch(addTodo({ id: '1', text: 'byo createAction', completed: true }));
store.dispatch(
addTodo({ id: '2', text: 'byo createReducer', completed: false }),
);
store.dispatch(addTodo({ id: '3', text: 'byo createSlice', completed: false }));
/*
[
{ id: '1', text: 'byo createAction', completed: true }
{ id: '2', text: 'byo createReducer', completed: false }
{ id: '3', text: 'byo createSlice', completed: false }
]
*/
store.dispatch(toggleTodo('2'));
/*
[
{ id: '1', text: 'byo createAction', completed: true }
{ id: '2', text: 'byo createReducer', completed: true }
{ id: '3', text: 'byo createSlice', completed: false }
]
*/
createSlice implementation
Okay, now that we have our implementation for createAction and createReducer built, we can move onto building our createSlice.
// Helper to build action types scoped to the slice name to avoid naming conflicts
const actionTypeBuilder = (slice) => (action) =>
slice ? `${slice}/${action}` : action;
export default function createSlice({
name,
initialState,
reducers,
extraReducers = {},
}) {
const actionKeys = Object.keys(reducers);
const createActionType = actionTypeBuilder(name);
/*
createSlice will create an action for each key:value pair inside the main `reducers` property.
extraReducers does not create an action for the key:value pair which allows outside actions to map
to a reducer inside our slice.
*/
const reducerMap = actionKeys.reduce((map, action) => {
map[createActionType(action)] = reducers[action];
return map;
}, extraReducers);
// Using our `createReducer` :tada:
const reducer = createReducer(initialState, reducerMap);
// This builds an object where the key is the actionType and the value is the
// corresponding actionCreator
const actionMap = actionKeys.reduce((map, action) => {
const type = createActionType(action);
// Using our `createAction` :tada:
map[action] = createAction(type);
return map;
}, {});
return {
actions: actionMap,
reducer,
name,
};
}Example usage for createSlice
import { createStore } from 'redux';
const { reducer, actions } = createSlice({
name: 'todos',
initialState = [],
reducers: {
addTodo: (state: State, payload: ToDo) => {
return [...state, action.payload];
},
toggleTodo: (state, payload: string) => {
return state.map((todo) => {
if (todo.id === payload) {
return { ...todo, completed: !todo.completed };
}
return todo;
});
},
},
});
const { addTodo, toggleTodo } = actions;
console.log(
addTodo({ id: '1', text: 'build my own createAction', completed: true }),
);
/*
{
type: 'todos/ADD_TODO',
payload: { id: '1', text: 'build my own createAction', completed: true },
}
*/
// After this point everything works exactly the same as our previous example
const store = createStore(reducer, []);
store.dispatch(addTodo({ id: '1', text: 'byo createAction', completed: true }));
store.dispatch(
addTodo({ id: '2', text: 'byo createReducer', completed: false }),
);
store.dispatch(addTodo({ id: '3', text: 'byo createSlice', completed: false }));
/*
[
{ id: '1', text: 'byo createAction', completed: true }
{ id: '2', text: 'byo createReducer', completed: false }
{ id: '3', text: 'byo createSlice', completed: false }
]
*/
store.dispatch(toggleTodo('2'));
/*
[
{ id: '1', text: 'byo createAction', completed: true }
{ id: '2', text: 'byo createReducer', completed: true }
{ id: '3', text: 'byo createSlice', completed: false }
]
*/
// All of our todos are done!
store.dispatch(toggleTodo('3'));Conclusion
This article demonstrates how leveraging a few simple helper functions significantly reduces the amount of boilerplate code required to add state and reducer logic to your redux app. All three of these functions can be used independently of each other. I also hope this article demystifies createSlice, which is now considered the
canonical way to use redux.