Mastering State Management with Unstated Next

Simplifying State Management with Unstated Next

What is Unstated Next?

Unstated Next is a powerful library built on React’s Context API, designed to simplify state management in your applications. By leveraging the Context API, Unstated Next provides a straightforward way to share state globally across your components.

The Problems Unstated Next Solves

Unstated Next tackles common state management issues, including:

• Accessing parent state from child components: No more prop drilling!
• Avoiding prop drilling: Unstated Next ensures that state is easily accessible without the need for cumbersome prop passing.

Unstated Next API Methods

The library offers three essential API methods:

1. createContainer(ourHook): Initializes context and takes the Hook whose state is to be shared globally.
2. Provider method: Appends to the context, accepting an optional initial value and a child component to be rendered.
3. useContainer(ctx) Hook: Takes in the context variable as an argument, providing access to global state.

Building a Simple To-Do App with Unstated Next

Let’s create a to-do app to demonstrate how Unstated Next works. We’ll start by setting up the project structure and installing the necessary dependencies.

Setup and Installation

Create a new project folder, initialize the directory, and install the required dependencies. Then, write the App rendering component in the index.js file.

The Todo Component

Create a custom Hook, useTodos(), to handle the state for our to-do app. This Hook initializes with two state objects: todos and todo. The todos state object is an array of all to-dos, while the todo state object is the to-do added to the todos array.

The Container and Consumer Components

Create a container from the useTodo() Hook, providing direct access to the app’s state and methods. Then, build the consumer component that displays the to-dos and allows adding new ones.

Running the App

Complete the app’s build process by writing the code for the index.html and style.css files. Configure package.json to run the app, and start it up to view it live on http://localhost:3000.

Conclusion

Unstated Next is an excellent React library for managing state in your applications. By providing a simple and efficient way to share state globally, Unstated Next simplifies your development process. Remember to explore the cases where the Context API, and thus Unstated Next, shouldn’t be used.