Actions in multiple slices in Redux toolkit

Question

The Redux toolkit docs mention using actions (or rather action types) in multiple reducers

First, Redux action types are not meant to be exclusive to a single slice. Conceptually, each slice reducer "owns" its own piece of the Redux state, but it should be able to listen to any action type and update its state appropriately. For example, many different slices might want to respond to a "user logged out" action by clearing data or resetting back to initial state values. Keep that in mind as you design your state shape and create your slices.

But, “keeping that in mind”, what is the best way to achieve this, given that the toolkit puts the slice name at the start of each action type? And that you export a function from that slice and you call that single function to dispatch the action? What am I missing? Does this have to be done in some way that doesn’t use createSlice?

Answer 1

It looks like this is what extraReducers is for:

One of the key concepts of Redux is that each slice reducer "owns" its slice of state, and that many slice reducers can independently respond to the same action type. extraReducers allows createSlice to respond to other action types besides the types it has generated.

It is a little strange that the action dispatcher should know which reducer the action belongs. I'm not sure the motivation of having reducers and extraReducers, but you can use extraReducers to allow several slices to respond to the same action.

Answer 2

I've found that using the extraReducers functionality when creating a slice with createSlice is the best way to do it.

In my case I've implemented this by creating a 'SliceFactory' class for each related feature. I've used it to do exactly what is in the example and reset relevant slices on user logout by listening for a LOGOUT_USER action.

Reference:

extraReducers: https://redux-toolkit.js.org/api/createSlice#extrareducer

Original article I used for the factory: https://robkendal.co.uk/blog/2020-01-27-react-redux-components-apis-and-handler-utilities-part-two

import { createSlice } from '@reduxjs/toolkit';
import { LOGOUT_USER } from '../redux/actions';

class CrudReducerFactory {
  constructor(slice, state = null, initialState = {}) {
    state = state || slice;

    this.initialState = initialState;

    const reducerResult = createSlice({
      name: slice,
      initialState: initialState[state],
      reducers: this._generateReducers(),

      extraReducers: (builder) => {
        builder.addCase(LOGOUT_USER, (state, action) => {
          return { ...this.initialState };
        });
      },
    });

    this.reducer = reducerResult.reducer;
    this.actions = reducerResult.actions;
  }

  _generateReducers = () => {
    return {
      // Create One
      requestCreateOne: (state, action) => {
        state.isLoading = true;
      },
      requestCreateOneSuccess: (state, action) => {
        state.isLoading = false;
        state.one = action.payload;
      },
      requestCreateOneError: (state, action) => {
        state.isLoading = false;
      },
      
      // ...snip...
    };
  };
}

export default CrudReducerFactory;

This is instantiated like so:

const factory = new CrudReducerFactory('users', 'users', { foo: 'bah', one: null, isLoading: false } );

You can then use factory.reducer and factory.actions to use accordingly.