React/Reflux data flow: One component twice in DOM

Question

Suppose I have the following Tree:

<LandingPage>
    <PageHeader>
        <Menu>
            <ShoppingCart>
        </Menu>
    </PageHeader>
    <MainPage>
        <ShoppingCart>
    </MainPage>
</LandingPage>

The component we care about is the ShoppingCart.

Upon mounting it (componentDidMount) ShoppingCart triggers an action, so that the ShoppingCartStore makes a request to a server and returns a list of articles - triggering a rerender of ShoppingCart .

The way it is set up now, there will always be two requests and two rerenders, because both components are in the dom.

One solution would be to have a common root trigger these requests, but that would be the LandingPage - and one would have to pass the data through PageHeader and Menu and MainPage.

Is there a better solution? Is that good enough?

Answer 1

I use an api.store for all data requests. I call the api.store in the entry app.js. Then I use an action that the api.store listens to for the initial data requests. app.js

'use strict';

import React  from 'react';
import ReactDom  from 'react-dom';

import AppCtrl from './components/app.ctrl.js';
import Actions from './actions/api.Actions';
import ApiStore from './stores/Api.Store';

window.ReactDom = ReactDom;

Actions.apiInit();

ReactDom.render( <AppCtrl />, document.getElementById('react') );

api.store

import Reflux from 'reflux';

import Actions from '../actions/api.Actions';
import ApiFct from '../utils/sa.api';

let ApiStoreObject = {
  newData: {
    "React version": "0.14",
    "Project": "ReFluxSuperAgent",
    "currentDateTime": new Date().toLocaleString()
  },
  listenables: Actions,
  apiInit() { ApiFct.setData(this.newData); },
  apiInitDone() { ApiFct.getData(); },
  apiSetData(data) { ApiFct.setData(data); }
}
const ApiStore = Reflux.createStore(ApiStoreObject);
export default ApiStore;

In the component that connects to a store the initial state calls the store data so if the data is already there you get it.

import React from 'react';

import BasicStore from '../stores/Basic.Store';

let AppCtrlSty = {
  height: '100%',
  padding: '0 10px 0 0'
}

const getState = () => {
  return {
    Data1: BasicStore.getData1(),
    Data2: BasicStore.getData2(),
    Data3: BasicStore.getData3()
  };
};

class AppCtrlRender extends React.Component {
   render() {
    let data1 = JSON.stringify(this.state.Data1, null, 2);
    let data2 = JSON.stringify(this.state.Data2, null, 2);
    let data3 = JSON.stringify(this.state.Data3, null, 2);
    return (
      <div id='AppCtrlSty' style={AppCtrlSty}>
        React 0.14 ReFlux with SuperAgent<br/><br/>
        Data1: {data1}<br/><br/>
        Data2: {data2}<br/><br/>
        Data3: {data3}<br/><br/>
      </div>
    );
  }
}

export default class AppCtrl extends AppCtrlRender {
  constructor() {
    super();
    this.state = getState();
  }

  componentDidMount = () => { this.unsubscribe = BasicStore.listen(this.storeDidChange); };
  componentWillUnmount = () => { this.unsubscribe(); };
  storeDidChange = (id) => {
    switch (id) {
      case 'data1': this.setState({Data1: BasicStore.getData1()}); break;
      case 'data2': this.setState({Data2: BasicStore.getData2()}); break;
      case 'data3': this.setState({Data3: BasicStore.getData3()}); break;
      default: this.setState(getState());
    }
  };
}

From https://github.com/calitek/ReactPatterns React.14/ReFluxSuperAgent.