rtk-query VS redux-saga

The Redux library is quite a common choice thanks to its broad ecosystem. Luckily, there is now a very useful Redux Toolkit that mitigates the amount of boilerplate you have to usually write. RTK Query is a very new Redux solution for data fetching and caching, hopefully making our lives even easier. Though the web seems to slowly be moving away from Redux to React Query, SWR or other solutions, mobile is a different story; Redux is holding on to its popularity, as it integrates well with libraries that persist and rehydrate the global state for users when they relaunch the app.

rtk query is built-in to the redux toolkit starting from v 1.6

For api data. Check out rtk query https://rtk-query-docs.netlify.app/ It is supposed to better for api data with redux. I have not yet tried it.

I haven't looked at Kea in a while, but I'll toss out some comparisons based on my knowledge of RTK and what I remember about Kea + looking at its docs.

Kea's main selling point is that it lets you define self-contained chunks of Redux logic. Initially, this is similar to RTK's `createSlice`, in that you're writing a set of "case reducers" + action creators. However, it also build in Redux-Saga as a general-purpose side effects approach, and lets you write "listeners" that respond to dispatched actions.

Where it particularly differs from RTK is in the amount of abstraction included. RTK tries to stay "visibly Redux" [0], and the abstractions are fairly thin - the focus is on simplifying the typical Redux code patterns, without hiding the fact that you're using Redux. Kea is much more heavily abstracted. It does use a number of Redux terms ("actions", "reducers", etc), but the code that you write looks noticeably different than a "typical" Redux app. Also, RTK focuses on thunks as the default async approach, rather than sagas [1]

I believe Kea also has some mechanisms for combining together those "logic" chunks in various ways, including doing so dynamically at runtime, and it appears to have some "lifecycle"-type callbacks for handling when those chunks get mounted and unmounted.

RTK Query [2] [3], on the other hand, is a purpose-built data-fetching abstraction, most similar to React Query and Apollo. Its only purpose is to fetch data from whatever URL endpoints you've defined, handle the loading state, update the cache with the results, and re-render whatever components care about that data.

I haven't actually used Kea myself, but it does appear to have some meaningful thought and development put into it. I would still recommend RTK as the default approach for anyone wanting to use Redux (and of course I'm biased there), but Kea has some interesting approaches.

[0] https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2019/10/redux-starter-kit-...

[1] https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2020/02/blogged-answers-wh...

[2] https://rtk-query-docs.netlify.app

[3] https://github.com/reduxjs/redux-toolkit/releases/tag/v1.6.0...

https://github.com/rtk-incubator/rtk-query/issues/215#issuecomment-826344927

tl;dr Apollo, URQL, SWR, react-query, nor even RTK Query are meant to be wholesale replacements for Redux which is meant for global state.

You may want to look into our upcoming "RTK Query" API, which is specifically designed to abstract the process of fetching and caching data for Redux. We've got one more alpha release coming up that we're finalizing now, and then we'll be merging the APIs back into Redux Toolkit itself and releasing it.

Redux provides state management that has been widely used across many different web ecosystems for a long time. NgRx provides a more opinionated, batteries-included framework for managing state and side effects in the Angular ecosystem based on the Redux pattern. Redux Toolkit provides users of Redux the same batteries-included approach with conveniences for setting up state management and side effects. The Redux Toolkit (RTK) team has recently released RTK Query, described as "an advanced data fetching and caching tool, designed to simplify common cases for loading data in a web application", built on top of Redux Toolkit and Redux internally. When I first read the documentation for RTK Query, it immediately piqued my interest in a few ways:

Check out RTK Query since you are already using Redux.

For the backend, we chose Python, Django Rest Framework. On the frontend, React, Redux, Saga, Sass. Let’s start with the backend, which was managed by Yegor. He writes about the server part of the project himself.

The whole article properly the best explanation of generators I have come across. This quote stuck out:

> Generators are a special type of function that can return multiple pieces of data during its execution. Traditional functions can return multiple data by using structures like Arrays and Objects, but Generators return data whenever the caller asks for it, and they pause execution until they are asked to continue to generate and return more data.

Applications of generators? I have only used Redux-Saga[1]. Can't even think of other libraries that use them, but would be interested in learning.

[1]: https://redux-saga.js.org/

redux-saga. The most popular effects library in js

Redux can be extended with a lot of other packages. For example with a side effect manager, you can separate side effects from your business logic, help with error handling and in the same process make testing of side effects a lot easier.

Consumer vs. Producer: Check out Redux Saga

Your app will likely have to deal with async calls like making remote API requests. redux-thunk and redux-saga were created to solve those problems. They may take some time to understand as they require understanding of functional programming and generators. Our advice is to deal with it only when you need it.

Hey thanks for the thoughtful response.

I agree with everything you mentioned here. I'd love to continue to chat with you about how to make testing sagas better.

If you'd like, it would be great if we could move this convo to https://github.com/redux-saga/redux-saga/discussions/2337

If there are dependent API calls, you can probably look at redux-saga. It’s one of the best libraries out there to manage the data.

redux-saga makes use of them in really nice way. https://redux-saga.js.org/ That’s where I’ve used them the most.