FluxEx

An extended Flux implementation to build isomorphic javascript React app.

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 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');

• 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);
}

• 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 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