rtk-query VS redux

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.

Redux

redux - Redux is a key tool used in managing state across an application. This can be used with any web technology including React, Vue and Angular docs

Redux is a client-state library.

react-redux: A powerhouse for efficient state management and data flow control. Learn more

Reducer-based: requires dispatching actions to update a big centralised state, often called a “single source of truth”. In this group, we have Redux and Zustand.

I am _thrilled_ to announce that:

Redux Toolkit 2.0 is LIVE!!!

- https://github.com/reduxjs/redux-toolkit/releases/tag/v2.0.0

This major version has new features, faster perf, smaller bundle size, and removes deprecated options.

It's accompanied by majors for all our Redux family packages

## RTK 2.0:

- a new `combineSlices` method for lazy-loading reducers - Updates to `createSlice` to include a `selectors` field and allow defining thunks inside

- Immer 10 w/ faster updates

- Removal of deprecated options

See the migration guide:

- https://redux.js.org/usage/migrations/migrating-rtk-2

All of the Redux libraries now have modernized packaging with full ESM/CJS compat. They also ship modern JS (no transpiling for IE11), which means smaller bundle sizes.

We've also done byte-shaving work to shrink the bundles (extracting error messages, de-duping imports)

## Redux core 5.0:

- The TS conversion we did in 2019!

- Action types _must_ be strings

- `UnknownAction` as the default action type

- Better preloaded state types

- Internal subscription improvements

- Still marks `createStore` as deprecated!

- https://github.com/reduxjs/redux/releases/tag/v5.0.0

## React-Redux 9.0:

- *Now requires React 18 and RTK 2.0 / Redux 5.0*

DEV is a Rails monolith, which uses Preact in the front-end using islands architecture. The reason why I mention all this is that it's not a full-stack JavaScript application, and there is no state management library like Redux or Zustand in use. The data store, for the most part on the front end, is all data attributes.

Oh hey, that's my post!

(yes I spend too much time refreshing HN :) )

FWIW I did end up with a packaging combination that seems to work sufficiently. I never did fix the "FalseCJS" issue that `are-the-types-wrong` is detecting. I played with double-emitting TS typedefs, and the `tsup` tool _does_ actually have support for that now (added by Andrew Branch from the TS team). So it might be more feasible now. But ultimately I decided I was tired of messing with packaging setup and that what I've got is good enough. (hopefully)

We're actually about to launch Redux Toolkit 2.0 and Redux 5.0 this week, assuming the last couple pieces come together. Here's the latest RCs - you can see the current `package.json` files in there:

- https://github.com/reduxjs/redux-toolkit/releases/tag/v2.0.0...

- https://github.com/reduxjs/redux/releases/tag/v5.0.0-rc.1