Redux-like state container in SwiftUI. Basics.

This week we will talk about building a state container similar to Redux and The Elm Architecture that provides a single source of truth for your app. A single state for the whole app makes it easier to debug and inspect. Single source of truth eliminates tons of bugs produced by creating multiple states across the app.

Single source of truth

The main idea here is describing the whole app state by using a single struct or composition of structs. Assume that we are working on a Github repos search app where the state is the repos array that we fetch matching some query using Github API.

struct AppState { var searchResult : [ Repo ] = [] }

Next step is passing the read-only app state to every view inside the app. The best way for doing that is SwiftUI’s Environment feature. We can put an object holding the whole app state in the Environment of the root view. Root view will share its Environment with all child views.

SwiftUI uses environment to pass system-wide and application-related information. You can also populate environment with your custom objects. To learn more about environment, take a look at my “The power of Environment in SwiftUI” post.

final class Store : ObservableObject { @Published private(set) var state : AppState }

In the example above, we create a store object that stores the app state and provides read-only access to it. State property uses @Published property wrapper that notifies SwiftUI during any changes. It allows us to keep up to date the whole app by deriving it from a single source of truth. We already talked about store objects in the previous posts, to learn more you can check “Modeling app state using Store objects in SwiftUI” post.

Reducer and Actions

It’s time to talk about user actions which lead to state mutations. Action is a simple enum or composition of enums describing a change of the state. For example, set loading value during data fetch, assign fetched repositories to the state property. Let’s take a look at the example code for Action enum.

enum AppAction { case search ( query : String ) case setSearchResult ( repos : [ Repo ]) }

Reducer is a function that takes current state, applies Action to the state, and generates a new state. Generally, reducer or composition of reducers is the single place where your app should mutate the state. The fact that the only one function can modify the whole app state is super simple, debuggable, and testable. Here is an example of reduce function.

typealias Reducer < State , Action > = ( inout State , Action ) -> Void func appReducer ( state : inout AppState , action : AppAction ) { switch action { case let . setSearchResults ( repos ): state . searchResult = repos case let . search ( query ): break } }

Unidirectional flow

Let’s talk about data flow now. Every view has a read-only access to the state via store object. Views can send actions to the store object. Reducer modifies the state, and then SwiftUI notifies all the views about state changes. SwiftUI has a super-efficient diffing algorithm that’s why diffing of the whole app state and updating changed views works so fast. Let’s modify our store object to support sending actions.

final class Store < State , Action > : ObservableObject { @Published private(set) var state : State private let reducer : Reducer < State , Action > init ( initialState : State , reducer : @escaping Reducer < State , Action > ) { self . state = initialState self . reducer = reducer } func send ( _ action : Action ) { reducer ( & state , action ) } }

State -> View -> Action -> State -> View

This architecture revolves around a strict unidirectional data flow. It means that all the data in the application follows the same pattern, making the logic of your app more predictable and easier to understand.

Side effects

We already implemented a unidirectional flow that accepts user actions and modifies the state, but what about async actions which we usually call side effects. How to bake a support for async tasks into our store type? I think it is a good time to introduce the usage of Combine framework that perfectly fits async task processing.

typealias Reducer < State , Action , Environment > = ( inout State , Action , Environment ) -> AnyPublisher < Action , Never > ?

We add support for async tasks by changing Reducer typealias, it has the additional parameter called Environment. Environment might be a plain struct that holds all needed dependencies like service and manager classes.

func appReducer ( state : inout AppState , action : AppAction , environment : Environment ) -> AnyPublisher < AppAction , Never > ? { switch action { case let . setSearchResults ( repos ): state . searchResult = repos case let . search ( query ): return environment . service . searchPublisher ( matching : query ) . replaceError ( with : []) . map { AppAction . setSearchResults ( repos : $0 ) } . eraseToAnyPublisher () } return nil }

Side Effect is a sequence of Actions which we can publish using Combine framework’s Publisher type. It allows us to handle async job and then publish an action that will be used by reducer to change the current state.

final class Store < State , Action , Environment > : ObservableObject { @Published private(set) var state : State private let environment : Environment private let reducer : Reducer < State , Action , Environment > private var cancellables : Set < AnyCancellable > = [] init ( initialState : State , reducer : @escaping Reducer < State , Action , Environment > , environment : Environment ) { self . state = initialState self . reducer = reducer self . environment = environment } func send ( _ action : Action ) { guard let effect = reducer ( & state , action , environment ) else { return } effect . receive ( on : DispatchQueue . main ) . sink ( receiveValue : send ) . store ( in : & cancellables ) } }

As you can see in the example above, we build a Store type that supports async tasks. Usually, Reducer resolves an action by applying it on top of the state. In case of an async action, Reducer returns it as Combine Publisher, then Store run it and send result back to the Reducer as a plain action.

Real usage example

Finally, we can finish our repos search app that calls Github API asynchronously and fetches repositories matching a query. The full source code available on Github.

typealias AppStore = Store < AppState , AppAction , AppEnvironment > struct SearchContainerView : View { @EnvironmentObject var store : AppStore @State private var query : String = "Swift" var body : some View { SearchView ( query : $ query , repos : store . state . searchResult , onCommit : fetch ) . onAppear ( perform : fetch ) } private func fetch () { store . send ( . search ( query : query )) } } struct SearchView : View { @Binding var query : String let repos : [ Repo ] let onCommit : () -> Void var body : some View { NavigationView { List { TextField ( "Type something" , text : $ query , onCommit : onCommit ) if repos . isEmpty { Text ( "Loading..." ) } else { ForEach ( repos ) { repo in RepoRow ( repo : repo ) } } } . navigationBarTitle ( Text ( "Search" )) } } }

We divide our screen into two views: Container View and Rendering View. Container View handles the actions and retrieves the needed piece of state from the global state. Rendering View accepts the data and renders it. We already talked about Container Views in my previous posts, to learn more take a look at “Introducing Container views in SwiftUI” post.

Conclusion

Today we learned how to build Redux-like state container with side-effects in mind. To achieve that we used Combine framework. I hope you enjoy the post. Feel free to follow me on Twitter and ask your questions related to this post. Thanks for reading and see you next week!

References