Shared State in Elm

Introduction

In Elm, splitting up a module into multiple smaller modules may be cumbersome and result in issues relating to the single source of truth principle. That’s why, in real world Elm applications, it is not seldom to encounter very large modules. This article will introduce an architectural concept to deal with this issue by allowing the division of modules into logical, consistent and reusable submodules.

This is often discouraged due to the additional complexity of the information that has to be available in several modules. Instead, it is suggested that files are larger and consist of one rather complex module.

In The life of a file, Czaplicki talks about this refactoring task and proposes possible solutions. He emphasizes that large files can still be controlled and are not more error prone because of cheap refactoring and the absence of ‘sneaky mutations’. If independent pieces of code exist which in addition may be reusable, he recommends to extract this functionality into a separate module.

We extend this refactoring concept by introducing a shared state that can be utilized when several parts of the code are not independent.

With the help of this example application, we propose how a state of either a single page application or components in a more complex module may be shared among each other. In this case, the shared model State is stored in the higher level module Main and its information can be accessed and mutated by individual components using the predefined API using messages.

Follow the code of this example on Github.

Related Work

Hanhinen proposed a concept of a shared state which can be found at elm-shared-state. In their version, the SharedState model holds information which is used by several submodules. The information is sent to each submodule via the added parameter in the view and update functions:

view : SharedState -> Model -> Html Msg

Additionally, the update functions of respective submodules return a SharedStateUpdate message which is processed by the SharedState module and used to update the state. This way, the submodules using the state do not have a direct way to manipulate it.

Therefore, the update function now looks like this:

update : SharedState -> Msg -> Model -> ( Model , Cmd Msg , SharedStateUpdate )

Description of our approach

We extended the approach from Hanhinen and use an example single page application to show our findings. The example site is a simple issue tracker:

It keeps track of a list of issues which are stored in the shared State .

type alias State = { list : List String }

The set of possible changes to the State are defined as messages and only modifiable with the update function which is defined as follows:

update : Msg -> State -> State

Modules

In addition to the State module, the application has the following four view modules:

The List module presents an overview of the issues. From here, issues may be created, viewed, updated or deleted.

module presents an overview of the issues. From here, issues may be created, viewed, updated or deleted. Issues can be viewed on the Item page.

page. An issue can be updated on the Edit page.

page. Additionally, a Header shows the current number of issues.

The following figure gives an overview of the update functionality using Edit as an example:

First, an update in Main is triggered. Then, Edit.update is called with the present Edit.Msg message which looks like the following:

type Msg = SetText String -- Edit the text in the TextField | GoBack -- Go back to the Overview | StateMsg State . Msg -- Change the State

The StateMsg is of great interest. It is triggered whenever a change in the State is needed. In our case, clicking the save button triggers the message StateMsg (EditIssue selectIdx text) which is then passed to the following update function:

update : Key -> Msg -> Model -> ( Model , Cmd Msg , Maybe State . Msg ) update key msg model = case msg of SetText text -> ( { model | text = text }, Cmd . none , Nothing ) GoBack -> ( model , Route . pushUrl key Route . List , Nothing ) StateMsg stateMsg -> ( model , Cmd . none , Just stateMsg )

The StateMsg is wrapped in a Maybe monad and only returned when an update of the State is needed. The update function thus returns Just (EditIssue selectIdx text) as the state update message.

The message type StateMsg State.Msg is introduced in every submodule which needs to update the state ( Header only consists of a view). This makes the update functions both smaller and more easily extensible.

Main now calls the update function of the state with the returned message. This only happens if a StateMsg is present, so steps four and five in the overview are optional. The new state is returned and saved along side the Edit.Module .

View

The following figure gives an overview of the view functionality:

Since most submodules need information held by the State , it is passed to the view functions. The modules display the respective view using both the shared state and their own module.

Discussion

A shared state can be used to improve consistency and avoid redundancy when information needs to be shared among multiple modules.

Advantages

The state module has a defined API which means that its model can only be mutated using the existing messages. The implementation is therefore hidden from the user. This is crucial to the design since it ensures data consistency and makes it easy to manage the set of possible state mutations. In addition, the API can be tested more easily.

Alternatives

Alternatively, submodules could each hold a respective subset of the higher level model. This makes the implementation of submodules straightforward, but also error prone. Since parts of the state are held in multiple models, the single source of truth principle is violated and redundancy is introduced.

Also, it could be an option to model the application in a single module. Technically speaking, this would not harm data consistency or modeling capability. However, breaking up the code in submodules is often times sensible because it improves the separation of concerns and makes the tasks of each module more apparent.

Drawbacks

Improvements can still be made with respect to abstraction and separation of concerns. Submodules, which are only allowed to mutate a subset of the state, still have access to any of the defined messages. Different types of update messages may be defined in the shared state to mitigate this issue.

With the presented architecture, it is not intended for submodules to propagate updates to models of other submodules. In essence, it is not possible for A to trigger an event that changes the model of B without the shared state holding the respective information. However, this type of update is useful and as of now renders a drawback to the shared state approach. For example, it would be beneficial if a change in a selection that is a state change would display a modal in a different module.

Perhaps, an extension in the form of a subscription system, may address this issue. Submodules might subscribe to state messages and receive updates when respective messages are processed by the shared state.

Try it yourself

You can try this example application by cloning this repository and building the elm app.

For example, run:

git clone https://github.com/CurrySoftware/elm-shared-state-example cd elm-shared-state-example elm reactor

Interested in working with us?

CurrySoftware is now offering Elm consulting services and we would love to work with you. Please contact us if you are interested!