How to handle server/request errors in flux?

Question

I've called an action creator from a component to create/edit a resource, which in turn sends an API request to a server. How should I handle cases where the server is down, or returns an error? I want any relevant components to be notified of the success/failure.

My current ideas are to:

1. Dispatch COMMENT_FAILED, COMMENT_SUCCESS actions to the comment store, which then notifies the components somehow?

2. Use promises within the initiating component to catch errors from the action call and respond/render them appropriately.

Which is better? Why?

This has been previously asked in React+Flux: Notify View/Component that action has failed?, but the only proposed solution is to use Promises as in 2. I can certainly do that, but it seems... un-Flux-like.

Answer 1

What I usually do is create an error reducer specific to my container/component. For instance, if the user filed a login I would dispatch the error to my login reducer as follows.

export default function dispatchError() {
      return function(dispatch) {
           dispatch({
                type: 'LOGIN_ERROR',
                payload: 'You entered an incorrect password'
           });
      }
 }   

Now in your instance this would be very similar. Anytime there is a failed request dispatch to your reducer.