redux-devtools VS styled-components

Also, you should use redux-devtools extension to get the most out of any react-redux-based project.

Use NgRx's action stream as a logging solution. Dispatch actions instead of logging. You don't have to worry about the state management part or anything either. Add the store-devtools package along with the base store package. It'll let you configure only logging while in development mode and a few other options. Then, install the Redux Devtools extension into your browser. That will give you a view of the dispatched actions and any data you want to pass along with them. It has a filter, so you can tag your actions like you normally would as described in the docs. Like, "[Log Level] [Feature] log message". Then, filter them in the dev tools to see just what you want. You can see a screenshot of it here. You may even like some of its other features and maybe you'll pick up more of the pattern as you see fit.

Redux DevTools is a browser extension that allows developers to inspect and debug Redux stores. This tool helps developers to track state changes, actions, and other data related to the Redux store. You can download it from its official GitHub repository: https://github.com/reduxjs/redux-devtools.

Redux dev tools

You can still keep your custom hooks in separate files, maybe in a folder called state. You could migrate to a state library when things start to seem unmanageable, or when you want one of the many cool features that a state library can offer, like automatically persisting parts of state to your user's storage using middleware (Redux docs, Zustand docs), easily managing API connections and query caching with RTK Query, or having a log of every state change with the ability to revert/go back in time to debug state changes with Redux Devtools (also works with Zustand).

With the redux-devtools-extension, we can now easily see all the actions that have been dispatched, as well as the current state of our store. This extension also allows us to time travel, meaning we can go back and forth through different states to see how our application got to where it is, as shown in the image below.

We need to see your RECEIVE_BENCHES action creator as well as dispatch call to tell you more. You should inspect what is going on in your reducer, either by setting a breakpoint in your editor's debug mode, by using Redux DevTools (https://github.com/reduxjs/redux-devtools), or simply by writing dirty console.log and debugger calls.

When an action is dispatched, all of the reducers will be notified and every single one of them will check if they can handle the action. Not only that, but the Redux dev tools will be a mess trying to see what action was fired when. That’s why we should try to think of actions as events that happened and not what the action is changing. For example, we should rather have an action called userLoggedIn than setUserId.

CSS-in-JS is a styling technique wherein CSS is composed using JavaScript instead of defined in external files. This method allows CSS to be scoped locally to components rather than globally, reducing the probability of style conflicts. Utilizing JavaScript also enables dynamic styling easily aligned with the component's state or props. Libraries like Styled Components and Emotion are popular choices in the React ecosystem for adopting this method.

In 2023, I had a chat with Max Stoiber, CEO of Stellate, on a podcast to learn about his early success on GitHub. His first open-source project, react-boilerplate/react-boilerplate, gained a whopping 10k stars in just one weekend after appearing on the homepage of Hacker News. This success led Max to drop out of university and create several other popular open-source projects, including styled-components. This library accelerates the process of building styles in React components.

Embracing the styled-components library allows developers to write actual CSS code to style their components. It utilizes tagged template literals to style components, enabling a seamless integration of styles within the component's JavaScript file. This approach eliminates the mapping between components and styles, thus enhancing developer productivity and component reusability.

styled-components: Allows for maintainable styling with CSS-in-JS. Learn more

Over the past few years, I've worked with React apps utilising various CSS-in-JS libraries, starting with styled-components, transitioning through emotion, Theme UI, and finally Stitches. I've also integrated MUI, Mantine, and Chakra in numerous client projects.

There are several alternatives to MUI. shadcn/ui is a modern alternative that is very popular. Ant Design is also a great alternative. Charkra UI can also be used as a UI Framework. Some people suggest just using styled components. Some use Tailwind CSS. Yet, for both styled components and Tailwind CSS, one still writes a lot of CSS. This might not provide the best developer experience compared to using a UI Framework, especially if we aim to avoid designing all the pages on the website.

Website: Styled Components

The project is build using several ready made components available within, Mantine. It’s a fully featured React components library. However some places still use some custom CSS-in-JS so we used some good ol’ styled components.