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FluxEx

An extended Flux implementation to build isomorphic javascript React app.

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Features

All in one Starter

Everything in React

Minimal context APIs

To understand Flux, you only need to learn these APIs: this.executeAction(), this.getStore(), this.dispatch() !

  • this.executeAction() or this.getStore(name) in components.
  • this.dispatch() or this.executeAction() or this.getStore(name) in actions.
  • this.emitChange() or this._get() or this._set() in stores.


  • [CORE] Super lightweight, less than 250 lines of code.
  • [CORE] Context based flux system.
  • [CORE] React Server side rendering + client mount.
  • [CORE] HTML as top level react component, no need container.
  • [EXTRA] express middleware to serve the fluxex application.
  • [EXTRA] full integrated gulp task for development.
  • [EXTRA] pjax support.
  • [EXTRA] rpc and api call support.

See the FluxEx Magic

  • Check example projects you can see how fluxex do server side rendering + context deliver + Full HTML react rendering!
  • No more index.html. Start with npm:express and your Html.jsx!
  • No more AJAX, all http request by npm:request!

Start from Scratch

Read Start from Scratch to know how to create a fluxex application!

Quick Start

Prepare your project

npm init
npm install fluxex

Use the Starter template

node_modules/.bin/fluxex_starter

Start the Server

node_modules/.bin/gulp develop
  • Connect to http://localhost:3001/search?q=pizza
  • You can start your development now, gulp handled everything (jshint, browserify, nodemon, restart, browser-sync).
  • Put your actions, stores and components into correspond directories.
  • Edit components/Html.jsx to include your React components.
  • Edit actions/routing.js to add routing.
  • Edit fluxexapp.js to add your store.

Difference with Flux

FluxEx is context based flux implemention. Server side react rendering can be done easy when the flux is scoped under a request based context. Store and dispatcher are singletons in Facebook flux, but in fluxex they are not.


Fluxex

  • Fluxex is an instance, it is constructed by provided context.
  • Fluxex can be serialized by .toString() and reconstructed by the serialized string. All server side store status can be transfered to client side by this way.
  • use the static .createApp() to create a Fluxex application.
var myApp = require('fluxex').createApp({
    product: require('./stores/product')
}, process.cwd() + '/components/Html.jsx');


Action

  • An action creator should return a promise.
  • An action creator function can be executed by .executeAction().
  • When the action be .executeAction(), the Fluxex instance can be referenced by this.
  • .executeAction() will return a promise, so you can manage asynchronous actions in promise way.
// inside a component, requires Fluxex.mixin
...
onStoreChange: function () {
    return this.getStore('myStore').getSomething();
},
handleClick: function () {
    this.executeAction(myAction);
}


Dispatcher

  • the Fluxex instance itself is a dispatcher with .dispatch() method.
  • the dispatched FOOBAR action will trigger all handle_FOOBAR method of all stores. When there is no handle_FOOBAR method in any store, an error will be throw.
// myAction
var myAction = function (payload) {
    ... do your tasks ....
    return this.dispatch('UPDATE_SOMETHING', ....); // this returns a promise
}


Store

  • Store is an instance, it is constructed by serialized status.
  • Store is created by a Fluxex.
  • Use .getStore(name) to get the store by name.
  • You can ._get() and ._set() by property name. Ex: this._set('data', 123)
  • Everything you ._set() can be serialized by .toString() and be tracked by your Fluxex application.
  • You can use waitFor property to refine dispatch depdency for specific action.
var myStore = {
    // the dispatch will happened after these stores be dispatched
    waitFor: {
        UPDATE_SOMETHING: ['oneStore', 'anotherStore']
    },

    // handle this.dispatch('UPDATE_SOMETHING', ....)
    handle_UPDATE_SOMETHING: function (payload) {
        this._set('data', payload); // There are ._get() and ._set() in all stores
        this.emitChange();
    }
}

Notes for IE8 support

  • NOTE React v15+ stop supporting IE8
  • You should add require('fluxex/extra/polyfill-ie8'); in your fluxexapp.js to polyfill EventListener methods and XMLHttpRequest consts for IE8.
  • catch is reserved keyword in IE8, you need to replace somePromise.catch(...) with somePromise['catch'](...)
  • for (... in ...) will loop beyond properties in IE8, you need to replace for (I in myArray) with myArray.forEach(function (V, I) { ...}

IE8 Unsupported features

  • window.history.pushState
  • set innerHTML of script or title node
  • compare prototype.constructor with another function
  • console and console.log when developer tool not opened