Apollo-client: Redux: store state and reducers

[Vanuan]

As far as I read, there's no way to pass a graphql response through reducers. I've looked into "apollo" state object but it doesn't seem to provide the same data we have in component's properties (in mapQueriesToProperties).

I'm new to redux, but should we be able to preprocess server's response before passing them on to React components?

I've tried dispatching data in React component but it doesn't feel right.

Is there a way to move data from queries to store?

[stubailo]

I'd suggest not copying GraphQL state into a new part of the store unless you really need to. If you need to reformat arguments, you can easily just use a new intermediate component:

funcition MyComponentReformatted(props) {
  return <MyComponent myProp={prop.data.thing} />
}

[Vanuan]

What if need some computed fields? Putting that logic to a component doesn't feel right. I thought I should be using reducers. But in reducers I don't have access to GraphGL data. Do I?

[Vanuan]

Can I just handle APOLLO_QUERY_RESULT? Or is it a private action?

[abhiaiyer91]

You can always use redux-thunk to fetch the data and put it in another reducer.
http://docs.apollostack.com/apollo-client/redux.html#async-actions

[jbinto]

This issue interests me.

We use a form library which is entirely stateless: it uses the onChange/value pattern and requires another component with local state (or a Redux store, etc) to manage its state.

Currently, we're using a Redux store with keys form and apollo.

We'd like to be able to extract data out of the Apollo query response, and populate the form state tree.

Right now, we're using components to deal with this, which feels a level or two too far down. Here's how we're managing to do it:

• We have 3 components:
  
  
  
  • Component (props-driven, completely unaware of Apollo)
  
  
  • Container (props-driven, not connected to Apollo but aware of it, e.g. depends on structure of query props)
  
  
  • ContainerWithData (e.g. Container with Apollo connect(), not testable/storybook-able)
  
  

All of the following applies to Container:

• We use mapQueriesToProps, and we extract the bit of the query result we're interested in via props.myQuery.foo.bar.baz. (This is the _initial_ form state.)
• We also use mapStateToProps, which plucks form.data out of the state tree, and passes it into Container's data prop. (This is the _current_ form state.)
• If props.data (from the Redux tree) is empty (the initial state from the reducer), we render Component using data={props.myQuery.foo.bar.baz} (initial)
• If props.data (from the Redux tree) is not empty, we render Component using data={props.data} (current -- via mapStateToProps)

It would be nice if Container could rely on looking in just one place, that is: the form in the Redux store, so we could eliminate this conditional logic.

This would (might?) require some way to intercept query responses and place them in different parts of the redux tree.

It seems that this approach isn't really what react-apollo is designed for, though. Maybe (probably) I'm misunderstanding something.

[stubailo]

Hmm, personally I would have actually used the approach that you just described. But I can understand that it's not appealing to everyone.

How about dispatching an action inside your componentDidMount to populate the form part of the store? You can do this by getting the data from mapQueriesToProps, or you can dispatch a thunk action like Abhi suggested above.

By the way, connect from Apollo actually passes in the query method as a prop of your component, so you can just call that if you need to fetch data at any time. I wouldn't rely on mapQueriesToProps handling every possible situation - sometimes you will need to query directly.

[helfer]

You can now use the reducer option on watchQuery for this purpose (in theory). It's not exactly what they're intended for, but it should work. I would however suggest updating your GraphQL schema in such a way that this kind of data manipulation isn't necessary.

[bojandragojevic]

I have same question.

We know that is redux if you want to apply some additional logic on your data response in state before you pass it to component you can do it in selector. But since with apollo you connect data response directly to component I don't know where to apply this logic, here we do not have selectors.

so we know store can look like this if we use redux and apollo

const state = {
  redux: {// application state},
  apollo: {// apollo state and data}
}

So for redux you would select piece of state and pass it mapStateToProps and before you pass it you can apply some business logic to selected peace of state, but how to apply it to apollo peace of state?

[helfer]

I believe you can pass a props function to the graphql HOC in react-apollo to format the props. If that's not what you're looking for, I think you should ask the question on the react-apollo repo.

[bojandragojevic]

That is one way but I prefer to keep data manipulation in data layer not to do it in UI layer.

[n1ru4l]

I also have the problem that I have a huge amount of data which should be transformed on the client only in order to render a svg graphic. I do not know where I would have to start since I want this all be handled on the data layer.

It got really messy be combining it with the components in Ember.js, so we are searching for a nice alternative and we are interested in using react, redux + apollo-client to solve these problems