I wanted to try out Redux toolkit. I've tried Redux and found all the boilerplate cumbersome. I had heard about the concept of a 'slice' and wanted to try it out. I thought I'd make some kind of app using a free API to try it out. I found the AniList Api and decided to make a simple todo list app around it.

I saw this being a test of RTK, so I decided to put all the state into the global store, instead of keeping some stuff in local state, like I might do otherwise. So generally, the components are going to be presentational and the state will live in the redux store. The components will dispatch events that will update the app state, then react by rerendering when the state they use changes.

I built out components like normal and then created a global store for the app state. The AniList Api provides a GraphQL interface, so I decided to use that for this. So if I weren't using RTK, I might house the Api interaction inside a custom hook, maybe it would return something like:

const [loading, data, error, request] = useGetAnime();

where you would call the request function to kick off the request, the loading var would flip over to true, then eventually would flip back false and data would have your payload.

But I notice that RTK slices are following this kind of pattern. They have a collection of state where you can put things like loading and data. They have actions that they supply and respond to, similar to the request function I would have done.

I also liked the grouping into a slice, by 'feature'. This provides modularity at an organization level that's intuitive. You can look at a features folder and tell what things are for. I've seen some gnarly redux powered sites that have an action creators folder packed with generic files that are impossible to figure out.

The slice concept opens up for adding in more state. The downside of the hooks approach is that you have to either overload the hook to do more stuff and possibly make it hard to maintain, or you can create more hooks, for example:

const [loading, data, error, request] = useUpdateAnimeList();

something like that, where you have another hook for updating.

In the slice, you already have system that's set up for holding state, actions and reducers, so adding more stuff is a natural fit.

Typing the redux stuff is hard and confusing, no change there.

// TODO: write up once i've added tests

// TODO: write up once i'm finished

// TODO: fix type errors / remove ignores