Redux Interview Questions and Answers

Redux is a javascript library for managing application state.

It is most commonly used with libraries such as React.js or Angular, etc.

Suppose, you need to pass data in between such components that don't have any relationship (parent-child), so while making communication between such components, it is difficult to pass data and maintaining them is also a very difficult task.

There are three possible solution to solve this probelm.

• Props
• Redux
• Context API

In such a case redux is very useful because Redux eliminates the need to continuously pass data from one component to another component.

If you are using redux with react, states will no longer need to be lifted up

Everything is handled by Redux itself.

Redux provides a way to centralize the state of your application.

Following are the benefits of using Redux:

1. Single-Source of Truth
2. Predictable States
3. Easy to Maintain
4. Reusable Code
5. No need to uplift State
6. Easy to Debug

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Redux is available as a package on NPM.

# Using NPM
npm i redux

OR

npm install redux

OR

npm install redux --save

#OR

# Using Yarn
yarn add redux

Redux can be described in three basic principles

1. Single-Source of Truth
2. State is Read-Only
3. Changes are made with Pure Functions

The state of your whole application is stored in an object tree, called Store.

The only way to change the state is to dispatch an Action, an object describing what happened.

To specify how the state tree is transformed by actions, you write pure Reducers.

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Redux allows you to manage the state of the application using single source of truth, called Store, Any Component can directly access the state from the Store using Subscribe method.

Let's understand the Redux workflow step by step:

1. Store - Redux offers a solution of storing all your application's state at one place, called store.
2. Dispatch - Actions can be dispatch based on the Event (e.g. OnClick, OnChange, etc).
3. Reducers - Reducers are the pure functions which takes the previous state and an action, and return the next state. (Always return new state objects, instead of mutating the previous state).
4. Subscribe - Any components can easily subscribe to store.
5. In Redux, components don't communicate directly with each other, but rather all state changes must go through the single source of truth, the store.

1. Store
2. Reducer
3. Action
4. Dispatch
5. Subscribe
6. Provider
7. Connect

A Store is an Object which holds the whole state tree of your application.

import React, { Component } from "react";
import { createStore } from "redux";

const initialState = {
  lang_code: "en"
};

const langReducer = (state = initialState, action) => {
  //make a copy of initialState
  let newState = {...state}; //(you can also use - Object.assign({}, state))
  if (action.type === "SET_LANGUAGE") {
    newState.lang_code = action.lang_code;
  }
  return newState;
};

const store = createStore(langReducer);

Reducer are pure fucntions which take the previous state of the app and return a new state based on the action passed to it.

function(state, action) => newState

Always remember that we should never mutate state inside the reducer, always return a new copy of state.

You can achieve this using

1. Object.assign()
2. Spread (…) operator

Actions are plain JavaScript objects and they must have a type property to indicate the type of action to be carried out. They must also have a payload that contains the information that should be worked on by the action.

Actions are sent using store.dispatch() method.

action: { 
  type: [TYPE], 
  payload: [DATA] 
}

Dispatch is a method which triggers action with type and payload to Reducer.

store.dispatch()

Subscribe is a method which is used to subscribe data/state from Store automatically whenever there will any changes in state.

store.subscribe()

The Provider is a component that has a reference to the Store and provides the data from the Store to the component it wraps.

Connect is a function communicates with the Provider.

import React, { Component } from "react";
import { createStore } from 'redux';

/**
 * This is a reducer, a pure function with (state, action) => state signature.
 * It describes how an action transforms the state into the next state.
 *
 * The shape of the state is up to you: it can be a primitive, an array, an object,
 * or even an Immutable.js data structure. The only important part is that you should
 * not mutate the state object, but return a new object if the state changes.
 *
 */
// Let's make a language reducer - langReducer

const initialState = {
  lang_code: "en"
};

const langReducer = (state = initialState, action) => {
  let newState = {...state}; //make a copy of initialState
  if (action.type === "SET_LANGUAGE") {
    newState.lang_code = action.lang_code;
  }
  return newState;
};

// Create a Redux store holding the state of your app.
let store = createStore(langReducer)

// The only way to mutate the internal state is to dispatch an action.
store.dispatch({
  type: "SET_LANGUAGE",
  lang_code: "hi"
});

// You can use subscribe() to update the UI in response to state changes.
store.subscribe(() => console.log(store.getState()))

Note:

1. It is just a basic example (All in One File), that help will help to understand redux implementation.
2. In Real Apps, You can organize your code in better ways, easier to maintaine & reuse etc.

A pure function always return same output for the same input arguments.

A pure function is a function which

1. always return the same output for the same input
2. has no side effects, means it doesn't change any external state.

Example

const add = (a, b) => a + b // A pure function

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You can export the store from the module you called createStore.

//Store.js
const store = createStore(Reducer);
export default store;


//Client.js
import store from './Store'
store.dispatch(action);

Flux is a Design Pattern and Redux is a library

REDUX	FLUX
Single Store	Multiple Store
Redux is a container for JavaScript apps.	Flux is a container for application state and logic that are registered to callbacks.
It offers interesting features such as writing applications, testing in different environments such as a server, client, etc.	It is an observer pattern that is modified to fit React.
In redux, actions can be functions or promises.	It is a fancy name given to observer pattern and Facebook has developed tools to aid the implementation of these patterns.
Redux is the first choice for web developers because it offers live code editing.	Flux supports actions that are simple JavaScript objects.

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No, Redux can be used as a data store. it is most commonly used with React.js and React Native.

Redux can also be used with Angular, Vue.js etc

In Memory, It keeps only reference not actual data.

1. redux: main core redux library (independent from react)
2. react-redux: connects your redux store with react components
3. redux-thunk: a redux middleware which helps you with async actions
4. redux-saga: a redux middleware library to handle asynchronous actions.