xstate VS zedux

XState is a powerful library with comprehensive documentation. Keeping the documentation handy while building your next app with XState will be invaluable.

XState is an excellent library that simplifies the utilization of actors in JavaScript applications. While this article focuses on using React, these principles apply equally well to other frameworks. In fact, they can be implemented anywhere JavaScript is executed.

In this article, I want to share a personal journey of discovery in the world of state management. My path led me to XState, a tool that I believe is the best choice for managing state in modern applications like React, Angular, Vue, and others. This isn't just a professional advice; it's a personal recommendation based on real-world experience.

You add the current user state to a React Context or state management library, read from it on the top bar, and write to it after a user signs in. Done. No big deal, right?

Lastly, I know that I've omitted many great tools like XState, React Query, and SWR. These tools are utilities that are very scalable in their own right, but aren't full replacements for a good state manager.

Atomic libs include Recoil, Jotai, and the one I maintain: Zedux. Zedux especially was designed to work well with sockets and RxJS observables and has been getting some traction recently, so of course I recommend checking it out. Feel free to hmu with any questions.

This new tool started driving our production apps in early 2021 and has been a lifesaver in the extremes of complexity. 2 years later, we have finally open-sourced this tool as "Zedux".

Zedux is a hybrid tool similar to RTK + RTKQ but with first-class DI support.

For atoms, Jotai or Zedux

Zedux is a new up-and-coming hybrid tool similar to RTK + RTK Query but with atoms

Atomic libraries like Recoil, Jotai, and Zedux specialize in expressing these dependencies clearly, giving you insight into your dependency graph and offering tools like evaluation tracing, time travel, and DI overrides to improve testability and discoverability of your code.

I'd recommend a powerful state management library for something like this, especially one that gives you full control over async flow outside React. Here's a codesandbox using Zedux to demonstrate sending 4 buffered requests per minute.

After Zustand, if you need anything more, I'd either go back to Redux or learn Jotai, an atomic library that's a little more powerful than Zustand. Atoms are a little more advanced, so I wouldn't start there. Though (full disclosure) I am the author of another atomic library that is aiming to make atoms simpler to learn and use. Someday we'll get there, but for now I'd say Zustand is the best place to start.

Source: I'm the creator of Zedux, a lib that we just publicly released a few days ago and drives lots of highly-volatile state like this in our apps. If you need a powerful state manager designed to work at scale with fast-moving state streamed over websockets (SSEs work too), it might be worth looking into. Cheers!

GitHub