Zustand: A Lightweight State Management Library for React

Discover how Zustand revolutionizes state management in React apps. Lightweight yet feature-rich, it simplifies complex state handling.

Sahil Khurana

Published: April 1, 2024

Key takeaways

Efficient State Management: Zustand helps in managing state in React applications in a lightweight and flexible way thereby decreasing the overhauling task of dealing with the large-scale state logic and improving maintainability.
Powerful Integration and Flexibility: Zustand’s simplicity in API and integrations for addressing the issue of the state immutability and for adding hooks and performing asynchronous actions allows to integrate and maintain the software state management meeting the needs of different industries, including finance and healthcare.
Enhanced Developer Experience: Zustand is easy to use when it comes to creation of stores, access of particular states and updating of the states which in turn makes it easier for developers to achieve the intended app states meaning developers using Zustand do not have to struggle when constructing their apps rather they can easily develop scalable and reliable React applications.

One of the most essential things when it comes to creating modern web applications, particularly projects in React, is state management. Whilst the built-in state management hooks of React such as useState and useReducer are strong, they can become intricate in large apps. Here is where Zustand comes into play, providing a lightweight yet feature-rich way for managing states in React applications.

Introduction to Zustand

Zustand is a library of state management that is specially designed for React. One of the easiest and effective ways to manage an application’s state within React using hooks is provided by this package which makes it easy to work with complex state logic and maintainability on developers’ side.

Zustand ultimately emphasizes simplicity, performance and flexibility in the context of software development companies. It has a minimal API that abstracts away much of the complexity that traditional approaches to managing state can have hence making it suitable for both small and huge applications.Zustand addresses various aspects of software development among them custom finance software development, healthcare software development services, cross-platform mobile app development services among others. It also supports Android and iOS development services, catering to the needs of banking software development companies and custom enterprise software development projects.

Understanding Zustand

Core Concepts

Stores: Zustand has stores to keep the state of applications. Store is a JavaScript object that holds the state and any functions that can update this state.
Hooks: Zustand includes hooks like createStore, useStore, useSelector, and useStoreApi for interaction between stores and React components.
Immutable Updates:For state updates, Zustand favors immutable, which helps in making sure that changes to states are effectively managed in an orderly manner.

Functions of Zustand

Zustand is equipped with some important methods that facilitate control over states within React applications:

createStore()
The createStore function creates a new store. It accepts two parameters:
- initialState: A JavaScript object defining the initial state of the store representing starting data structure for the application’s state.
- actions: A function whose argument is a set function used to update the store. Inside actions it’s possible to define a number of actions (functions) that could be used for altering state in specific ways.
  
  createStore function returns useStore hook which allows accessing and subscribing to component’s local state.
useStore()
To access the state of a store and subscribe to state changes, the React components useStore hook is used with two parameters which are:
- selector: It allows you to select parts of the state within your component that should be updated. If not provided, useStore returns the entire state of the store.
- equalityFn: It is an optional equality function that checks whether there is any difference between previous and current states. This way Zustand can determine if there needs to be re-rendering in case some values in these states have changed. By default shallow equality check (===) is used by Zustand when comparing state values.
useStoreApi()
The useStoreApi hook returns an object that contains all of the actions which can be called for updating the store’s internal objects.
When building stores, accessing state and actions in components, and handling efficient updates of the state in a React application, it becomes necessary to use these functions and hooks so as to ensure clear separation of concerns in managing their status. Actions are responsible for updating state while components subscribe to relevant parts of the state using selectors thus ensuring efficient re-renders based on state changes.

Integrating Zustand

Creating stores, accessing state and actions in components, and efficiently handling state updates are all part of how Zustand integrates into a React app. For this reason let’s examine each step on an exemplification basis.

Step 1: Install Zustand

Start by installing Zustand in your React project. You can do this using npm or yarn:

npm install zustand
# or
yarn add zustand

npm install zustand

# or

yarn add zustand

Step 2: Create a Store

Next by building a store referring to the createStore function from Zustand. Define the initial start state and what are the actions that an agent may take to update that state.

import create from 'zustand';

// Create a store
const useCounterStore = create((set) =&gt; ({
  count: 0,
  increment: () =&gt; set((state) =&gt; ({ count: state.count + 1 })),
  decrement: () =&gt; set((state) =&gt; ({ count: state.count - 1 })),
}));

import create from 'zustand';

// Create a store

const useCounterStore = create((set) => ({

count: 0,

increment: () => set((state) => ({ count: state.count + 1 })),

decrement: () => set((state) => ({ count: state.count - 1 })),

}));

In this example, we’ve created a simple counter store with an initial state of count and the action for increasing count and decreasing count.

Step 3: Use the Store in Components

Now, you could add the useCounterStore hook from your React components to access the state and action which you defined in the store.

import React from 'react';
import { useCounterStore } from './store';

const CounterComponent = () =&gt; {
  // Access state and actions from the store
  const { count, increment, decrement } = useCounterStore();

  return (
    &lt;div&gt;
      &lt;h1&gt;Counter: {count}&lt;/h1&gt;
      &lt;button onClick={increment}&gt;Increment&lt;/button&gt;
      &lt;button onClick={decrement}&gt;Decrement&lt;/button&gt;
    &lt;/div&gt;
  );
};

export default CounterComponent;

import React from 'react';

import { useCounterStore } from './store';

const CounterComponent = () => {

// Access state and actions from the store

const { count, increment, decrement } = useCounterStore();

return (

<div>

<h1>Counter: {count}</h1>

<button onClick={increment}>Increment</button>

<button onClick={decrement}>Decrement</button>

</div>

);

};

export default CounterComponent;

In this part what we’re intending to do is to use useCounterStore to be able to reach count, increment, and decrement functions from store. When the buttons are clicked, the corresponding components’ state is being updated and the appropriate action is triggered which calls for re-renders in the component.

Maintaining an adaptive state is a natural ability of every zustand component since the components change in the store automatically. This will, therefore, cater for situations where a state which is already updated will re-render upon performing some actions, so that the components can reload to reflect the updated state.

import React from 'react';
import { useCounterStore } from './store';

const DisplayComponent = () =&gt; {
  // Subscribe to state changes
  const count = useCounterStore((state) =&gt; state.count);

  return &lt;h1&gt;Current Count: {count}&lt;/h1&gt;;
};

export default DisplayComponent;

import React from 'react';

import { useCounterStore } from './store';

const DisplayComponent = () => {

// Subscribe to state changes

const count = useCounterStore((state) => state.count);

return <h1>Current Count: {count}</h1>;

};

export default DisplayComponent;

In this section, concrete use of useCounterStore is performed along with a selector function (state) => state.count in order to connect only to count changes. This signifies that the component gets re-rendered quickly when the State count updates.

Handle Asynchronous Actions

Zustand allows for asynchronous action operators, such as API data fetching as well. To describe that the asynchronous actions are part of the createStore feature and the state is updated only when the asynchronous operation is over.

import create from 'zustand';

const useDataStore = create((set) =&gt; ({
  data: null,
  fetchData: async () =&gt; {
    const response = await fetch('https://api.example.com/data');
    const data = await response.json();
    set({ data });
  },
}));

import create from 'zustand';

const useDataStore = create((set) => ({

data: null,

fetchData: async () => {

const response = await fetch('https://api.example.com/data');

const data = await response.json();

set({ data });

}));

That is, fetchData is an asynchronous action, invoking an API call in the back end to get data and update the store’s data State.

Conclusion

Zustand is a strong but lightweight state management library for React applications. It has become awesome due to its simplicity, performance optimization and flexible API which has made it popular among developers who prefer other complex state management tools like Redux.

By using the core concepts, functions and hooks of Zustand, developers can effectively manipulate application game status, synchronize updates as well as integrate Zustand into their React projects without difficulties.

With Zustand, handling states becomes manageable enabling developers to concentrate on creating sturdy and scalable react apps.Employing Zustand in your development collection of tools will be crucial to enterprises such as travel software development companies, iPhone application development companies, custom software for business solutions, and much more. It is an efficient method for managing state that will improve performance and scalability and reduce complexity of development.

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Introduction to Zustand
Understanding Zustand
Core Concepts
Functions of Zustand
Integrating Zustand
Step 1: Install Zustand
Step 2: Create a Store
Step 3: Use the Store in Components
Step 4: Subscribe to State Changes
Handle Asynchronous Actions
Conclusion

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Zustand: A Lightweight State Management Library for React

Key takeaways

Efficient State Management: Zustand helps in managing state in React applications in a lightweight and flexible way thereby decreasing the overhauling task of dealing with the large-scale state logic and improving maintainability.

Introduction to Zustand

Understanding Zustand

Core Concepts

Functions of Zustand

Integrating Zustand

Step 1: Install Zustand

Step 2: Create a Store

Step 3: Use the Store in Components

Handle Asynchronous Actions

Conclusion

Get a Fast Estimate on Your Software
Development Project

Table of Contents

See how efficient your engineering team really is?

Related Blog Articles

Zustand: A Lightweight State Management Library for React

Key takeaways

Efficient State Management: Zustand helps in managing state in React applications in a lightweight and flexible way thereby decreasing the overhauling task of dealing with the large-scale state logic and improving maintainability.

Introduction to Zustand

Understanding Zustand

Core Concepts

Functions of Zustand

Integrating Zustand

Step 1: Install Zustand

Step 2: Create a Store

Step 3: Use the Store in Components

Step 4: Subscribe to State Changes

Handle Asynchronous Actions

Conclusion

Get a Fast Estimate on Your Software Development Project

Table of Contents

See how efficient your engineering team really is?

Related Blog Articles

Get a Fast Estimate on Your Software
Development Project