Future of redux-router: redux-simple-router?

[omnidan]

As you may have noticed, this project isn't actively maintained right now.

• @acdlite personally doesn't use redux-router anymore (correct me if I got that wrong 😅) and doesn't have time to maintain it.
• I comment and merge some smaller PRs when I get around it, but I'm really busy with other things too.
• @Scarysize has been helping out a lot lately and I'm really thankful, he has been keeping this project alive.

@jlongster developed a project called redux-simple-router - it is a lot smaller (and thus, easier to maintain) than redux-router. Some people already switched to that.

It seems like a better solution (redux-router re-implements a lot of features that history and react-router already do), so it probably makes sense to combine the projects (read: replace redux-router with redux-simple-router)

What do you think? Is there anything missing in redux-simple-router that redux-router has? Just let me know in a comment here.

PS: I haven't managed to get a hold of @acdlite yet, but once he gets online on discord I'll talk to him about it. (or he can just comment here 😄)

[Scarysize]

Also feel free to ping @omnidan or me (@Scarysize) in the redux-router Discord channel or pm us!

[jlongster]

Let me know whatever you all want to do. I don't think there's anything wrong with having 2 solutions, but whatever works. I can help with any transitions plans if needed.

[omnidan]

Unless we find enough people who can (together) actively maintain redux-router, it's going to be problematic. @Scarysize is doing good work, but there's so many issues with the current implementation. (He can probably explain this in further detail) I like how redux-simple-router is small, simple and easy to maintain.

If anyone has switched to redux-simple-router, would be nice to hear experiences, thoughts, etc. Would be really cool if we could get a "Switching to redux-simple-router" guide up.

[ellbee]

I just switched to using redux-simple-router in my current project at work and it has been seamless so far. It is a small project which doesn't ask a lot of the router, so I might not be hitting the cases where redux-router is the superior choice. As @jlongster says, it is 'ruthlessly simple'. I can understand everything it is doing, so I can be comfortable using it in a project even though it is less than a week old.

There is one thing that I know of that redux-simple-router does currently that redux-router does not, and that is work correctly with redux-devtools (I don't think that version of redux-simple-router is on NPM yet, but I imagine it will be soon)

[idolize]

Disclaimer: I haven't actually built anything with redux-router or redux-simple-router yet, but I've been trying to stay up to date on where it's going (I plan to overhaul my routing code soon to use react-router 1.0 and I'm looking to use one of these two solutions). So please forgive my ignorance if anything I write here is inaccurate.

From the docs, it sounds like redux-simple-router only stores a String of the current URL in the redux state. Personally, I'd much rather have the URL pre-parsed with Objects for params and query; I don't want to have to deal with string parsing.

Similarly, I want to be able to easily check if a given route is active or not based on the information stored in my reducer state. Redux-router has such a capability, and I'd prefer to avoid having to use anything too browser-specific to check this information, since it can really be expressed as a "pure" function of the state.

Anyway, in many ways I like idea of building something simple on top of react-router (because it makes maintaining the library much easier), but at the same time I also like the goals of redux-router to avoid having any real dependency on React (and just treating the route state as any other redux state).

It's a tough call, but at the end of the day I just want a simple way to keep my route state in sync with some convenient ways to update and check the status of that state. How pure, minimal, or decoupled the underlying implementation is doesn't matter much to me in any practical sense because I'm already using React, react-router, and redux anyway 😄

[acdlite]

redux-simple-router is a cool project. It's pretty similar to what Redux Router (then redux-react-router) was in its earliest version. It benefits from being less ambitious — Redux Router tries to store all the router state, including params, inside your Redux store.

There's an argument that Redux Router is overly ambitious given the current design of React Router. I've already done some work to help with this — the useRoutes module was designed largely for this library. But I don't have much time right now to contribute further to React Router so that Redux Router can be the best version of itself.

For now I'd say both libraries can continue to co-exist. I would like to give more attention to this library, but I just haven't found the time recently. Hopefully soon.

[acdlite]

Another reason I've neglected this project recently is that I haven't been using it heavily in the project I'm working on, which uses Relay. I wish I had infinite time for OSS, but it turns out I spend what time I have on projects that I'm actively using. Sorry :( I'll try to be a better OSS citizen going forward, and not start projects that I can't devote sufficient time to.

[gaearon]

Hey, please don't feel guilty for starting an open source project! We all appreciate the work you put into this, and open source projects don't always work out the way we want them to. (I'm screwing people over with not updating React Transform for so long too—like you, I don't find time to contribute in the past weeks because I'm busy with other stuff.)

If you don't think you can handle this project at the current stage, I think we'd all benefit from a little “state of affairs” summary, if you can find time to write it up. Basically: what your goals were, what makes them harder to achieve on RR side, tradeoffs of other approaches you saw in the wild, and recommendations you can give us with moving forward. If you don't have time to write it up, maybe we can chat for 30 minutes some day on the week and you can give me an idea verbally so I can write it up myself.

Most importantly, don't burn out. 👍

[idolize]

@gaearon @acdlite Agreed! Definitely not wasted work (just look at how your changes and thought process has shaped the 1.0 react-outer API). Plus, this project has put forth some great ideas about how to handle route state in redux. I'd definitely consider it a key part in the evolution of building redux/react applications.

I also agree that a "state of affairs" kind of post would be beneficial. Sometimes it's hard to know where and when to step in with a seemingly-stagnant OSS project, because frequently the author has thoughts and ideas that the general public just isn't aware of (as we both know, a lot of the best "programming" often times takes place inside one's head, away from the keyboard, while laying in bed or taking a shower 😄).

Even if it's just a "hey, I don't have the time or resources to work on this anymore" there is no need to feel bad - it just gives others an opportunity to step in where you left off!

[kmudrick]

FWIW, I had been struggling to get redux-router working in a universal app for the past 2 days, running into multiple issues (documenting issues, dependency issues, etc.) I saw this thread and gave redux-simple-router a go, and had it working in less than 2 hours.

[jlongster]

I agree about both library co-existing. I wasn't trying to take anything away from this project at all, and I'm sure there's some good things to be learned from it. I thought about contributing to it, but I wanted to try such a different approach that I didn't really see how without starting a new library. The main problem I have with this library is that it stores everything in redux, which makes it not serializable, which is really crucial. And I really like react-router's API.

I don't think we should move too fast, there might be people out there who like this a lot better so we can just give it time to see if more people will help maintain this and solve those people's problems. I'm all for choices.

[omnidan]

Thanks for all the feedback 😄 Keeping both libraries sounds like a good plan - all we need to do now is get more people to contribute actively to redux-router (at the moment there are more issues opened every day than @Scarysize manages to look at / fix / close!) 😅

I agree that writing a "state of affairs" summary would be nice, it would also help @Scarysize and me make decisions for redux-router without having to ask @acdlite all the time.

@acdlite Don't feel bad, that's the point of open source projects - when you can't maintain them anymore, the community will join in and work on it. With proprietary projects that's not possible and the project would just die.

@idolize You can probably use some other library to convert the string to an object, but I still get your point.

@jlongster I totally agree with you, I opened this issue for this exact reason - I honestly didn't know what the best way to handle it would be, and I haven't used redux-simple-router yet so I couldn't tell if it's missing something that redux-router has or what switching feels like.

Switching guides would still be cool as some people might start out using redux-router and then realize redux-simple-router is a better solution, but also the other way around!

If anyone is interested in contributing, feel free to ping us in the discord channel! 😁