Redux Resource XHR

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Redux Resource XHR is an action creator that simplifies CRUD operations.

More information about CRUD actions in Redux Resource can be found in the CRUD Actions guide and the four guides on CRUD:

• Reading resources
• Updating resources
• Creating resources
• Deleting resources

We recommend familiarizing yourself with the content in those guides before using this library.

Installation

Install redux-resource-xhr from npm:

npm install redux-resource-xhr --save

Then, import the crudRequest action creator in your application:

import { crudRequest } from 'redux-resource-xhr';

Usage

This library has two exports: an action creator for CRUD operations, crudRequest, and the library used for making the HTTP requests, xhr.

crudRequest( crudAction, options )

An action creator for CRUD requests.

Arguments

1. crudAction: (String) The CRUD operation being performed. One of "create", "read", "update", or "delete". This determines the CRUD Action types that are dispatched.

2. options (Object): Options to configure the CRUD request.

   • actionDefaults: (Object) Properties that will be included on each dispatched action. All of the CRUD Action options are supported, such as resourceName and resources.

   • dispatch: (Function) The dispatch function of a Redux store. If you're using redux-thunk), this will be the first argument of the thunk.

   • xhrOptions: (Object) Options to pass to the xhr library. You must pass a a url (or uri) option. You will typically also want to pass json: true, which will serialize your request body into JSON, as well as parse the response body as JSON. For more, see the examples below and the xhr documentation.

   • [transformData]: (Function) An optional function to transform the data received by the server. It receives one argument, body, which is the response from the server, parsed as JSON. Return a transformed list of resources. This can be used to format the server response into a Redux Resource-compatible format. For more, see the guide on Resources.

   • [onPending]: (Function) An optional function that allows you to modify the "pending" action, as well as control when it is dispatched. It is called with one argument: action. When this function is provided, you will be responsible for dispatching the action.

   • [onAborted]: (Function) An optional function that allows you to modify the "aborted" action, as well as control when it is dispatched. It is called with arguments (action, res). When this function is provided, you will be responsible for dispatching the action.

   • [onFailed]: (Function) An optional function that allows you to modify the "failed" action, as well as control when it is dispatched. It is called with arguments (action, err, res). When this function is provided, you will be responsible for dispatching the action.

   • [onSucceeded]: (Function) An optional function that allows you to modify the "succeeded" action, as well as control when it is dispatched. It is called with arguments (action, res, body). When this function is provided, you will be responsible for dispatching the action.

     If all that you need to do is transform the resources that your backend returns, then you should use transformData instead of onSuceeded.

Returns

(XMLHttpRequest): An instance of a XMLHttpRequest. Typically, you'll use this object to abort the request (should you need to) by calling myXhr.abort().

Example

import { crudRequest } from 'redux-resource-xhr';
import store from './store';

const xhrOptions = {
  method: 'GET',
  json: true,
  url: '/books',
  qs: {
    user: 'someone@example.com'
  }
};

const xhr = crudRequest('read', {
  dispatch: store.dispatch,
  actionDefaults: {
    resourceName: 'books',
    request: 'getHomePageBooks',
    list: 'homePageBooks',
    mergeListIds: false
  },
  xhrOptions
});

// Cancel the request if you need to
xhr.abort();

xhr( options )

This is the library used to make HTTP requests. It is a thin wrapper around the library xhr, and supports all of the same options and signatures.

On top of that, it adds several new features:

1. Support for query string serialization (similar to the request library).

2. Omitting the callback will return a native Promise.

Customizing Query String Serialization

If you pass a qs object, then the object will be serialized into a query parameter using the querystringify library. This library supports basic serialization, but we don't expect it to work for every API that you interface with.

You can change how the query string is serialized using two options:

• qsStringify - a function with the signature (qs, options). It should return the string to be appended to the URI.

• qsStringifyOptions - an object that is passed as the second argument to the qsStringify method.

For instance, if you wish to use the qs library, you might do this:

import { xhr } from 'redux-resource-xhr';
import qs from 'qs';

xhr('/books', {
  method: 'GET',
  qs: {
    pageSize: 10,
    pageNumber: 0,
    publishers: ['goldenBooks', 'penguinBooks']
  },
  qsStringify: qs.stringify,
  qsStringifyOptions: { arrayFormat: 'brackets' }
}, cb);

Example

import { xhr } from 'redux-resource-xhr';

const booksSearch = xhr.get('/books', {
  // Pass a `qs` option, and it will be stringified and appended to the URL
  // for you
  qs: {
    bookName: 'brilliance of the moon'
  },
  json: true
}, (err, res, body) => {
  console.log('Got some books', body);
});

// Later, you can abort the request:
booksSearch.abort();

// Omit a callback to get a native Promise. This can be useful sometimes, but the
// tradeoff is that you cannot cancel Promises.
xhr.get('/books/24')
  .then(
    (res) => console.log('got a book', res),
    (err) => console.log('there was an error', err)
  );

Tips

• The onSucceeded option of crudRequest can be useful if your backend returns related resources in a single request. Or, if you wish to chain requests before dispatching an action, you can do that with onSucceeded, too.

• A good pattern for using this collection is to make your own action creators that "wrap" these action creators using redux-thunk. That way, your view layer doesn't need to concern itself with all of the configuration necessary to use these action creators. For instances, an action creator for reading books in your application may look like the following:

  import { crudRequest } from 'redux-resource-xhr';
  
  function readManyBooks({ pageNumber }) {
    return (dispatch) => {
      const xhrOptions = {
        method: 'GET',
        json: true,
        url: '/books',
        qs: { pageNumber }
      };
  
      return crudRequest('read', {
        actionDefaults: {
          resourceName: 'books',
          request: 'getHomePageBooks',
          list: 'homePageBooks',
          mergeListIds: false,
        },
        xhrOptions,
        dispatch
      });
    };
  }
  

  Then, in your view layer, you can call readManyBooks({ pageNumber: 5 }).