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Working with NgRx Effects

Working with NgRx Effects

Almost every web application will, at some point, need to interact with some external resources. The most classic solution to that would be a service-based approach where components are calling and interacting with the external resources directly through services. In this case, most of the heavy lifting is delegated to the services and a component in this scenario still carries a responsibility to directly initiate those interactions.

NgRx Effects provides us with a way to isolate interactions, with the aforementioned services, from the components. Within Effects, we can manage various tasks ie. communication with the API, long-running tasks, and practically every other external interaction. In this scenario, the component doesn't need to know about these interactions at all. Its only requires some input data and then emits simple events (actions).

In this article, we will build on top of the application we started in Introduction to NgRx. You can find the entry point for this article on my GitHub repo. If you want to follow this article's code, please clone the repository and checkout the effects_entryPoint tag.

git clone git@github.com:ktrz/introduction-to-ngrx.git

git checkout effects_entryPoint

After cloning, just install all the dependencies.

yarn install

and you can see the example app by running

yarn start -o

Getting started

In order to add NgRx Effects to our application, all we need to do is use the ng add functionality offered by the Angular CLI. Run the following command:

ng add @ngrx/effects@latest

It will add and install the @ngrx/effects library to your package.json and scaffold your AppModule to import the NgRx EffectsModule into your application.

This is the code that the Angular CLI will generate for you:

/* Other imports */
import { EffectsModule } from '@ngrx/effects';

@NgModule({
  declarations: [
    AppComponent
  ],
  imports: [
    /* Other imported modules */
    EffectsModule.forRoot([]),
  ],
  bootstrap: [AppComponent]
})
export class AppModule {
}

With the setup complete, we can start modifying the app to introduce and handle some API calls using Effects.

Design interactions - Actions & Reducers

When you're designing new features, I highly encouarge you to first create the actions which we expect to see in the application. Let's look at the example API, which you can clone and checkout: effects_ready branch from this repo. Then, use the npm start command to run it locally.

The API consists of the following endpoints:

GET /api/photos - returns an array of photos PUT /api/photos/:photoId/like - returns the photo that was liked PUT /api/photos/:photoId/dislike - returns photo that was disliked

We can start designing our app interactions by handling how the list of photos is loaded. First, we'll need a trigger action to start fetching the list of photos. Since the request can either return successfully, or with an error, let's model that as well within the actions:

// src/app/store/photo.actions.ts
import {createAction, props} from '@ngrx/store';
import {Photo} from '../photo/photo';

export const loadPhotos = createAction('[Photo List] Load Photos');
export const loadPhotosSuccess = createAction('[Photo List] Load Photos Success', props<{photos: Photo[]}>());
export const loadPhotosError = createAction('[Photo List] Load Photos Error');

We have modeled the actions that might occur in the application. Now it's time to handle them properly in the photo.reducer.ts.

// src/app/store/photo.reducer.ts

/* other imports */
import {loadPhotosSuccess} from './photo.actions';

const initialState: PhotoState = {};

export const photoReducer = createReducer(
  initialState,
  /* previous `on` handlers */
  on(loadPhotosSuccess, (state, {photos}) => photos.reduce((acc, photo) => ({
    ...acc,
    [photo.id]: photo
  }), {}))
);

Since we're getting an array of photos, and we're keeping them in the state as an id-indexed map, we just need to transform it into the appropriate shape. Since we assume that the API returns all of the photos, we can replace the whole previous state.

Great! We now have a correctly working reducer. However, we don't actually emit any action that will put the data in our Store anywhere in our application. To verify that it works correctly, we can dispatch loadPhotosSuccess action in our AppComponent:

// src/app/app.component.ts

export class AppComponent implements OnInit {
  photos$ = this.store.select(selectPhotos);

  constructor(private store: Store<AppState>) {
  }

  ngOnInit(): void {
    this.store.dispatch(loadPhotosSuccess({
      photos: [
        {
          id: '2d335401-d65e-4059-b8f0-a4816c82086f',
          title: 'Introduction to NgRx',
          url: 'https://ngrx.io/assets/images/ngrx-badge.png',
          likes: 0,
          dislikes: 0,
        },
        {
          id: '65a7eb36-f887-4a93-8fe7-38d20c77906f',
          title: 'Angular',
          url: 'https://angular.io/assets/images/logos/angular/angular.png',
          likes: 0,
          dislikes: 0,
        }
      ]
    }));
  }
}

The data is loaded correctly and all the other functionality is still working as expected. Let's revert this dispatch so we can finally create our Effects, which will allow our available photos to asynchronously load.

Create Effects

In NgRx, Effects are encapsulated in a regular Angular Injectable class. To let NgRx know to use our class as Effects, we need to add an EffectsModule.forRoot([]) array inside of our AppModule imports:

// src/app/store/photo.effects.ts

import {Actions} from '@ngrx/effects';
import {PhotoService} from '../api/photo.service';
import {Injectable} from '@angular/core';

@Injectable()
export class PhotoEffects {
  constructor(
    private actions$: Actions, // this is an RxJS stream of all actions
    private photoService: PhotoService // we will need this service for API calls
  ) {}
}
// src/app/app.module.ts

@NgModule({
  declarations: [
    AppComponent
  ],
  imports: [
    / * other imports */
    EffectsModule.forRoot([PhotoEffects]),
    // this is necessary for `PhotoService` to have access to the HttpClient
    HttpClientModule
  ],
  providers: [],
  bootstrap: [AppComponent]
})
export class AppModule {}

Inside of the PhotoEffects, we will create properties that will react to specific actions being dispatched, perform some side effect (in this case an API call), and susequently dispatch another action based on the API call result. This flow is presented in the following diagram:

Effects diagram

In our case, we will listen for the loadPhotos action being dispatched. Then, we will call the PhotoService -> getPhotos() method, which should either return the correct data, or return an error (ie. a network error). Upon receiving data, we can dispatch the loadPhotosSuccess action, and in order to handle possible errors, we might dispatch loadPhotosError:

// src/app/store/photo.effects.ts

import {Actions, createEffect, Effect, ofType} from '@ngrx/effects';
import {PhotoService} from '../api/photo.service';
import {Injectable} from '@angular/core';
import {loadPhotos, loadPhotosError, loadPhotosSuccess} from './photo.actions';
import {catchError, map, switchMap} from 'rxjs/operators';
import {of} from 'rxjs';

@Injectable()
export class PhotoEffects {
  loadPhotos$ = createEffect(() =>
    this.actions$.pipe(
      ofType(loadPhotos),
      switchMap(() => this.photoService.getPhotos().pipe(
        map(photos => loadPhotosSuccess({photos})),
        catchError(() => of(loadPhotosError()))
      ))
    )
  );

  constructor(
    private actions$: Actions,
    private photoService: PhotoService
  ) {}
}

The app still doesn't do anything. That's because we need the loadPhotos action to be dispatched somewhere. We can do it on the AppComponent initialization inside of ngOnInit lifecycle hook.

// src/app/app.component.ts

export class AppComponent implements OnInit {
  /* Rest of the component */

  constructor(private store: Store<AppState>) {}

  ngOnInit(): void {
    this.store.dispatch(loadPhotos());
  }

  /* Rest of the component */
}

If we look at our application again, we can see that the correct data has loaded. In the network tab of the Dev Tools, we can see the correct API being called. Liking/disliking still works, at least until we refresh the page. We still don't perform any API calls when we like or dislike a photo. Let's implement that behavior similarly to how we implemented photo loading.

The easiest way to accomplish this is by treating the likePhotoand dislikePhoto actions as triggers for the API call, and upon a successful or failed response, emitting a new action. Let's name those updatePhotoSuccess and updatePhotoError:

// src/app/store/photo.actions.ts

import {createAction, props} from '@ngrx/store';
import {Photo} from '../photo/photo';

/* other actions */

export const updatePhotoSuccess = createAction('[Photo List] Update Photo Success', props<{photo: Photo}>());
export const updatePhotoError = createAction('[Photo List] Update Photo Error');

Now, in reducer, instead of having separate handling for like and dislike, we can replace it with a single handler for updatePhotoSuccess

// src/app/store/photo.reducer.ts

/* Rest of the file */

const initialState: PhotoState = {};

export const photoReducer = createReducer(
  initialState,
  on(updatePhotoSuccess, (state, {photo}) => ({
    ...state,
    [photo.id]: photo
  })),
  on(loadPhotosSuccess, (state, {photos}) => photos.reduce((acc, photo) => ({
    ...acc,
    [photo.id]: photo
  }), {}))
);

Now, with all actions and reducers in place, all that is left to do is add a new effect responsible for performing API call and emitting a new action for updating the state.

@Injectable()
export class PhotoEffects {
  / * loadPhotos$ effect */

  likePhoto$ = createEffect(() => this.actions$.pipe(
    ofType(likePhoto),
    mergeMap(({id}) => this.photoService.likePhoto(id).pipe(
      map(photo => updatePhotoSuccess({photo})),
      catchError(() => [updatePhotoError()])
    ))
  ));

  dislikePhoto$ = createEffect(() => this.actions$.pipe(
    ofType(dislikePhoto),
    mergeMap(({id}) => this.photoService.dislikePhoto(id).pipe(
      map(photo => updatePhotoSuccess({photo})),
      catchError(() => [updatePhotoError()])
    ))
  ));

  /* constructor */
}

Conclusion

Now, all the functionality is still working, and our data is kept safely on the server. All of this was done without modifying the component's code (except for initial dispatch of loadPhotos). That means we can add some complex logic for how we handle data (ie. add data polling, optimistic update, caching etc.) without requiring the components to know about this. This enables us to keep the codebase cleaner and much easier to maintain.

You can find the code for this article's end result on my GitHub repos:

In case you have any questions you can always tweet or DM me @ktrz. I'm always happy to help!

This Dot Labs is a development consultancy that is trusted by top industry companies, including Stripe, Xero, Wikimedia, Docusign, and Twilio. This Dot takes a hands-on approach by providing tailored development strategies to help you approach your most pressing challenges with clarity and confidence. Whether it's bridging the gap between business and technology or modernizing legacy systems, you’ll find a breadth of experience and knowledge you need. Check out how This Dot Labs can empower your tech journey.

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In-App DevTools The first thing that caught my attention is that breaking away from traditional browser extensions, Nuxt DevTools v1.0 is seamlessly integrated within your Nuxt app. This ensures universal compatibility across browsers and devices, offering a more stable and consistent development experience. This setup also means the tools are readily available in the app, making your work more efficient. It's a smart move from the usual browser extensions, making it a notable highlight. To use it you just need to press Shift + Option + D` (macOS) or `Shift + Alt + D` (Windows): With simple keystrokes, the Nuxt DevTools v1.0 springs to life directly within your app, ready for action. This integration eliminates the need to toggle between windows or panels, keeping your workflow streamlined and focused. The tools are not only easily accessible but also intelligently designed to enhance your productivity. Pages, Components, and Componsables View The Pages, Components, and Composables View in Nuxt DevTools v1.0 are a clear roadmap for your app. They help you understand how your app is built by simply showing its structure. It's like having a map that makes sense of your app's layout, making the complex parts of your code easier to understand. This is really helpful for new developers learning about the app and experienced developers working on big projects. Pages View lists all your app's pages, making it easier to move around and see how your site is structured. What's impressive is the live update capability. As you explore the DevTools, you can see the changes happening in real-time, giving you instant feedback on your app's behavior. Components View is like a detailed map of all the parts (components) your app uses, showing you how they connect and depend on each other. This helps you keep everything organized, especially in big projects. You can inspect components, change layouts, see their references, and filter them. By showcasing all the auto-imported composables, Nuxt DevTools provides a clear overview of the composables in use, including their source files. This feature brings much-needed clarity to managing composables within large projects. You can also see short descriptions and documentation links in some of them. Together, these features give you a clear picture of your app's layout and workings, simplifying navigation and management. Modules and Static Assets Management This aspect of the DevTools revolutionizes module management. It displays all registered modules, documentation, and repository links, making it easy to discover and install new modules from the community! This makes managing and expanding your app's capabilities more straightforward than ever. On the other hand, handling static assets like images and videos becomes a breeze. The tool allows you to preview and integrate these assets effortlessly within the DevTools environment. These features significantly enhance the ease and efficiency of managing your app's dynamic and static elements. The Runtime Config and Payload Editor The Runtime Config and Payload Editor in Nuxt DevTools make working with your app's settings and data straightforward. The Runtime Config lets you play with different configuration settings in real time, like adjusting settings on the fly and seeing the effects immediately. This is great for fine-tuning your app without guesswork. The Payload Editor is all about managing the data your app handles, especially data passed from server to client. It's like having a direct view and control over the data your app uses and displays. This tool is handy for seeing how changes in data impact your app, making it easier to understand and debug data-related issues. Open Graph Preview The Open Graph Preview in Nuxt DevTools is a feature I find incredibly handy and a real time-saver. It lets you see how your app will appear when shared on social media platforms. This tool is crucial for SEO and social media presence, as it previews the Open Graph tags (like images and descriptions) used when your app is shared. No more deploying first to check if everything looks right – you can now tweak and get instant feedback within the DevTools. This feature not only streamlines the process of optimizing for social media but also ensures your app makes the best possible first impression online. Timeline The Timeline feature in Nuxt DevTools is another standout tool. It lets you track when and how each part of your app (like composables) is called. This is different from typical performance tools because it focuses on the high-level aspects of your app, like navigation events and composable calls, giving you a more practical view of your app's operation. It's particularly useful for understanding the sequence and impact of events and actions in your app, making it easier to spot issues and optimize performance. This timeline view brings a new level of clarity to monitoring your app's behavior in real-time. Production Build Analyzer The Production Build Analyzer feature in Nuxt DevTools v1.0 is like a health check for your app. It looks at your app's final build and shows you how to make it better and faster. Think of it as a doctor for your app, pointing out areas that need improvement and helping you optimize performance. API Playground The API Playground in Nuxt DevTools v1.0 is like a sandbox where you can play and experiment with your app's APIs. It's a space where you can easily test and try out different things without affecting your main app. This makes it a great tool for trying out new ideas or checking how changes might work. Some other cool features Another amazing aspect of Nuxt DevTools is the embedded full-featured VS Code. It's like having your favorite code editor inside the DevTools, with all its powerful features and extensions. It's incredibly convenient for making quick edits or tweaks to your code. Then there's the Component Inspector. Think of it as your code's detective tool. It lets you easily pinpoint and understand which parts of your code are behind specific elements on your page. This makes identifying and editing components a breeze. And remember customization! Nuxt DevTools lets you tweak its UI to suit your style. This means you can set up the tools just how you like them, making your development environment more comfortable and tailored to your preferences. Conclusion In summary, Nuxt DevTools v1.0 marks a revolutionary step in web development, offering a comprehensive suite of features that elevate the entire development process. Features like live updates, easy navigation, and a user-friendly interface enrich the development experience. Each tool within Nuxt DevTools v1.0 is thoughtfully designed to simplify and enhance how developers build and manage their applications. In essence, Nuxt DevTools v1.0 is more than just a toolkit; it's a transformative companion for developers seeking to build high-quality web applications more efficiently and effectively. It represents the future of web development tools, setting new standards in developer experience and productivity....