Redux React Alternatives

5 Alternatives to React Redux in 2020

Reducing boilerplates and cutting out the middleman with Redux alternatives for React applications.

Redux has become the popular state management solution for most applications using React, Vue, or Angular as front-end frameworks. One of the main reasons for the popularity of Redux is its lightweight size of a mere 2KB.

Redux works on the simple principle of storing the entire state of the application is a single central store. This store can be accessed by all components and as such, removes the need to pass parameters and properties between components. The main building blocks of Redux are its actions, reducers, and store.

Let’s look at how Redux works to understand better the difference between it and its alternatives.

So, in a nutshell, API calls from components are sent to the Reducers. They are functions that return the new state based on the older state of the object. The new state is stored in the store, which is the central entity in Redux applications that accesses the previous state.

In addition to holding the application state and controlling access to it, the store also allows the state to be updated and handles registering and unregistering of listeners via subscribing.

Why do we need alternatives for Redux?

Redux and its usage may sound simple, but there are some disadvantages associated with it:

1. There is a considerable learning curve involved. Learning Redux can become further difficult as knowledge of functional programming is necessary.
2. It increases boilerplating for simple changes. As the flow in redux is pre-defined, you have to stick with it. In smaller applications, that amount of boilerplate seems even more excessive.
3. Even a minor change in Redux triggers the DOM restructuring process. Developers do not favor this as it is time-consuming and can adversely affect performance.

Alternatives for Redux

Many alternative State Management libraries have been created to overcome the disadvantages of Redux. Each of them has its own set of strengths and weaknesses. Let’s look at some of the top options and understand what they are best suited for.

MobX

MobX synchronizes the models and UI by applying concepts of reactive programming. It only updates the required parts of the UI instead of reloading it entirely. MobX works on Object-Oriented Concepts and data models of the application. MobX eases the documentation of classes and stores that include properties and methods that are used in the app. It supports rapid development by quick delivery of UI objects during development and allows adding the lifecycle hook “componentWillReact()” for reactive updates. This simplifies the routing and navigation of the application.