React for Real

Design the Data Flow

We’ll start by analyzing our application so we can figure out how to express its functionality with actions and reducers, and how these actions map to features. Then we’ll design the state and use reducers to create updated copies of the state, and we’ll examine the behavior of the Redux store in the browser with the Redux development tools, even when you haven’t built any user interface yet.

The techniques we’ll use might feel a bit odd at first, so initially we won’t concern ourselves with the UI so you can focus on the basics of Redux itself. Creating actions and reducers separately from the UI will also demonstrate one of the main features of Redux: keeping the data layer completely decoupled from the structure of the ...