zustand VS redux-devtools-extension

Zustand

Link: https://zustand-demo.pmnd.rs/

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?

Zustand

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.

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.

Zustand on GitHub

Maybe you heard about Redux, Zustand or MobX. All of them are state management libraires for React. But why would you even need one? And should you learn one now?

Dev tools: @redux-devtools/extension

With the middleware functionality, we can easily actually use an amazing extension created for Redux, Redux DevTools link. We just need to import the devtools middleware, and attach it to our store.

FWIW, I added an "action stack trace" feature to the Redux DevTools a couple years ago. Click on any action in the left list, and then click the "Trace" tab in the upper right to view the exact stack trace where it was dispatched from.

When working on a complex software solution, we often find ourselves scratching our heads over a bug that was reported to us. It's essential to have proper tools to trace the issues which like to hide in our code execution paths. Luckily for the devs using NgRx in their project, the application state is kept in a single location and all the actions that can modify it are easily traceable with some great DevTools. As NgRx adheres to the redux pattern, we can use the same Redux DevTools as we would use for any other Redux base application. This tool is essential for me when debugging an NgRx based application.

If any react noobs are reading this, the best React state management setup for you is Redux+Immer. After some setup, it's easy to use, and the docs are very good and up to date.

When I was learning React, I kept putting off Redux because youtube said it was complicated and you didn't need it after useContext. Big mistake. Our app became more complicated because our state management(useState/useContext) was so simple. Switching to Redux dramatically simplified our most complicated components.

Also, the Redux dev tools extension is a game changer. It lets you see every state change, in order, with traces and diffs.

https://github.com/zalmoxisus/redux-devtools-extension

Pros can obviously make up their own mind. I’ve tried Mobx and the tooling just wasn’t there, but I hear their diffing algos are good.

Fluxor also supports the ReduxDevTools browser extension. To enable it, first install the NuGet package Fluxor.Blazor.Web.ReduxDevTools:

Redux devtools chrome extension: https://github.com/zalmoxisus/redux-devtools-extension