Get Started with Redux Toolkit: A Tutorial for Beginners

You must be familiar with Redux, the well-known state management toolkit for JavaScript apps, if you work as a web developer. Redux Toolkit is a streamlined abstraction on top of Redux that makes writing Redux code simpler and quicker. Everything you need to know about Redux Toolkit, including its main features, advantages, and how to utilize it to create scalable and effective apps, will be covered in this lesson. What does Redux Toolkit mean?

Redux Toolkit is a set of tools and abstractions that make it easier and quicker to develop Redux code. Redux’s typical use cases are intended to be made simpler by this, allowing developers to concentrate on creating apps rather than setting up Redux. The Redux Toolkit’s primary features include some of the following: Streamlined store setup: The createSlice method offered by Redux Toolkit enables you to declare your reducers, actions, and starting state all in one location.

Redux Toolkit leverages Immer behind the scenes to offer a quick and effective approach to change the state of your application. This is known as immutable update logic. Middleware configuration: Redux Toolkit includes pre-configured middleware that is often used in Redux applications, such as Redux Thunk and Redux Saga. Integration of DevTools: To make it simple to debug your Redux code, the Redux Toolkit comes with a pre-configured DevTools configuration.

Using Redux Toolkit has many benefits, including:

1. Faster development: Redux’s setup and configuration are made easier by the Redux Toolkit, which frees you up to concentrate on writing your application’s logic rather than boilerplate code.
2. Easier to read and maintain code: Your Redux code will be easier to read and maintain over time if you use the Redux Toolkit to promote consistency in structure.
3. Improved performance: To deliver immutable changes to your state, Redux Toolkit employs Immer, which can enhance the efficiency of your application.
4. Better debugging experience: DevTools that are pre-configured in the Redux Toolkit make it simple to debug your programme and monitor activity in your Redux store.

Now that we have covered the basics of Redux Toolkit, let’s dive into how to use it in your application

Installing Redux Toolkit as a dependency in your project is a prerequisite for using it. Npm or yarn can be used for this:

bash

`npm install @reduxjs/toolkit
# or
yarn add @reduxjs/toolkit

After Redux Toolkit is installed, you may use its primary functionality, such createSlice and configureStore. Using Redux Toolkit to create a Redux store Making a shop is the first step in utilizing Redux Toolkit. A Redux store with middleware and other configuration settings may be easily created using the configureStore method. javascript

`import { configureStore } from '@reduxjs/toolkit'
const store = configureStore({  
reducer: {
    // define your reducers here  },
  middleware: [
    // define your middleware here  ],
 })`;

In the code above, we use configureStore to create a new Redux store. We pass an object with a reducer property that defines our reducers and a middleware property that defines any middleware we want to use.

A slice is a small piece of your Redux store that represents a specific part of your application’s state. With Redux Toolkit, you can define your slices using the createSlice function, which generates a reducer function and a set of actions based on a specified initial state.

Let’s see how we can define a slice using createSlice. In the previous example, we defined a counterSlice with an initial state of 0 and two reducer functions, increment and decrement, which increment and decrement the counter, respectively.

import { configureStore } from "@reduxjs/toolkit";

const store = configureStore({
  reducer: {
    // Define your reducers here
  },
  middleware: [
    // Define your middleware here
  ],
});

In the code above, we pass an object with the following properties to createSlice:

name: The name of the slice. This is used to generate the action types and action creators for the slice.

initialState: The initial state of the slice.

reducers: An object that defines the reducer functions for the slice.

Once you have defined a slice using createSlice, you can use the generated reducer and actions in your application. In the previous example, we defined a counterSlice with two reducer functions, increment and decrement. We can now use these functions to update the state of our counter in response to user actions.

import { createSlice } from "@reduxjs/toolkit";

const counterSlice = createSlice({
  name: "counter",
  initialState: 0,
  reducers: {
    increment: (state) => state + 1,
    decrement: (state) => state - 1,
  },
});

// Create a Redux store with the counter slice
const store = configureStore({
  reducer: counterSlice.reducer,
});

// Dispatch actions to update the counter
store.dispatch(counterSlice.actions.increment());
store.dispatch(counterSlice.actions.increment());
store.dispatch(counterSlice.actions.decrement());

In the code above, we import createSlice from @reduxjs/toolkit and use it to define a counterSlice. We then create a Redux store with the counterSlice.reducer and dispatch actions to update the counter.

Middleware is a powerful feature of Redux that allows you to modify the behavior of dispatching actions to the store. With Redux Toolkit, you can use middleware such as redux-thunk and redux-saga out of the box, or write your own custom middleware.

import {
  createSlice,
  configureStore,
  getDefaultMiddleware,
} from "@reduxjs/toolkit";
import thunkMiddleware from "redux-thunk";
const counterSlice = createSlice({
  name: "counter",
  initialState: 0,
  reducers: {
    increment: (state) => state + 1,
    decrement: (state) => state - 1,
  },
});
const middleware = [...getDefaultMiddleware(), thunkMiddleware];
const store = configureStore({
  reducer: counterSlice.reducer,
  middleware,
});

In the code above, we use the getDefaultMiddleware function to get the default middleware provided by Redux Toolkit and add redux-thunk middleware to handle asynchronous actions. We then pass the middleware array to the configureStore function to create our Redux store.

The fundamentals of Redux Toolkit and how it streamlines the creation of Redux apps were discussed in this lesson. Also, we learned how to use configureStore to construct a Redux store, createSlice to specify a slice, and dispatch actions to change the store’s state. In order to manage asynchronous operations, we also learnt how to use middleware using the Redux Toolkit. With Redux Toolkit, you can create Redux code that is more readable, easier to maintain, and performs better. Redux Toolkit’s tools and utilities allow you to concentrate on creating your application logic rather than worrying about the specifics.