📜 democrat

React, but for state management !

Democrat is a library that mimic the API of React (Components, hooks, Context...) but instead of producing DOM mutation it produces a state tree. You can then use this state tree as global state management system (like redux or mobx).

Project Status

While this project is probably not 100% stable it has a decent amount of tests and is used in a few projects without any issue.

Install

npm install democrat

Gist

import { useState, useCallback, createElement } from 'democrat';

// Create a Democrat "component"
const MainStore = () => {
  // all your familiar hooks are here
  const [count, setCount] = useState(0);

  const increment = useCallback(() => setCount(prev => prev + 1), []);

  // return your state at the end
  return {
    count,
    increment,
  };
};

// Render your component
const store = Democrat.render(createElement(MainStore, {}));
// subscribe to state update
store.subscribe(render);
render();

function render = () => {
  console.log(store.getState());
};

How is this different from React ?

There are a few diffrences with React

1. Return value

With Democrat instead of JSX, you return data. More precisly, you return what you want to expose in your state.

2. useChildren

In React to use other component you have to return an element of it in your render. In Democrat you can't do that since what you return is your state. Instead you can use the useChildren hook. The useChildren is very similar to when you return <MyComponent /> in React:

• It will create a diff to define what to update/mount/unmount
• If props don't change it will not re-render but re-use the previous result instead But the difference is that you get the result of that children an can use it in the parent component.

const Child = () => {
  // ..
  return { some: 'data' };
};

const Parent = () => {
  //...
  const childData = Democrat.useChildren(Democrat.createElement(Child, {}));
  // childData = { some: 'data' }
  //...
  return { children: childData };
};

3. createElement signature

The signature of Democrat's createElement is createElement(Component, props, key). As you can see, unlike the React's one it does not accept ...children as argument, instead you should pass children as a props. This difference mainly exist because of TypeScript since we can't correctly type ...children.

useChildren supported data

useChildren supports the following data structure:

• Array ([])
• Object ({})
• Map

const Child = () => {
  return 42;
};

const Parent = () => {
  //...
  const childData = Democrat.useChildren({
    a: Democrat.createElement(Child, {}),
    b: Democrat.createElement(Child, {}),
  });
  // childData = { a: 42, b: 42 }
  //...
  return {};
};

Using hooks library

Because Democrat's hooks works just like React's ones with a little trick you can use some of React hooks in Democrat. This let you use third party hooks made for React directly in Democrat. All you need to do is pass the instance of React to the Democrat.render options.

import React from 'react';
import { render } from 'democrat';

render(/*...*/, { ReactInstance: React });

For now the following hooks are supported:

• useState
• useReducer
• useEffect
• useMemo
• useCallback
• useLayoutEffect
• useRef

Note: While useContext exists in Democrat we cannot use the React version of it because of how context works (we would need to also replace createContext but we have no way to detect when we should create a Democrat context vs when we should create a React context...).

createFactory

The createFactory function is a small helper. It returns the Component you pass in as well as two functions:

• createElement: to create an element out of the component by passing the props.
• useChildren: to quickly use the component as children.

const Child = createFactory(({ name }) => {});

const Parent = createFactory(() => {
  const child1 = useChildren(Child.createElement({ name: 'Paul' }));
  const child2 = Child.useChildren({ name: 'Paul' });
});

Components

import * as Democrat from 'democrat';

const Counter = () => {
  const [count, setCount] = Democrat.useState(1);

  const increment = Democrat.useCallback(() => setCount((prev) => prev + 1), []);

  const result = Democrat.useMemo(
    () => ({
      count,
      increment,
    }),
    [count, increment],
  );

  return result;
};

const Store = () => {
  const counter = Democrat.useChildren(Democrat.createElement(Counter, {}));
  const countersObject = Democrat.useChildren({
    counterA: Democrat.createElement(Counter, {}),
    counterB: Democrat.createElement(Counter, {}),
  });
  const countersArray = Democrat.useChildren(
    // create as many counters as `count`
    Array(counter.count)
      .fill(null)
      .map(() => Democrat.createElement(Counter, {})),
  );

  return Democrat.useMemo(
    () => ({
      counter,
      countersObject,
      countersArray,
    }),
    [counter, countersObject, countersArray],
  );
};