Is there any place for OOP in redux?

Question

I\'ve been using object-oriented programming practices for 25 years and trying to move toward functional programming for the last 5 years, but my mind always goes towards OOP wh

Answer 1

The answer is that it's possible but heavily discouraged and non-idiomatic.

React does rely on classes and single-level inheritance of React.Component to implement stateful components with lifecycles, but you are officially discouraged from doing further levels of inheritance in components.

Redux is built around Functional Programming principles. For a variety of reasons, you are encouraged to keep your state as plain JS objects and arrays, and access/manipulate it using plain functions.

I've certainly seen many libraries that tried to add an OOP layer on top of Redux (such as classes whose methods are turned into action creators and reducers). Those work, but are definitely going against the overall spirit of Redux.

I do actually use a library called Redux-ORM, which does allow you to define Model classes that act as a facade over the plain JS objects in your store. However, unlike many of the other libraries that I've seen, it works with Redux rather than trying to change how Redux behaves. I discussed how Redux-ORM works, how I use it, and why it's still reasonably idiomatic, in my blog posts Practical Redux, Part 1: Redux-ORM Basics and Practical Redux, Part 2: Redux-ORM Concepts and Techniques. Overall, it's an excellent tool for helping manage relationships and normalized data in your Redux store.

Finally, I'm currently working on a blog post that will discuss the actual technical limitations that Redux requires (and why), vs how you are intended to use Redux, vs how it's possible to use Redux. I hope to have that up in the next week or so - keep an eye on http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com .