Zustand: Streamlining State Management in React Native Applications

Introduction to Zustand

Managing the state of React Native applications is a crucial aspect of building robust and maintainable mobile apps. While React Native provides the foundation for creating user interfaces, choosing the right state management solution is essential to efficiently handle data and UI interactions.

Zustand is a popular state management library known for its simplicity, performance, and developer-friendly API. In this blog, we’ll explore Zustand, discussing its features, benefits, and how it can simplify state management in your mobile apps.

Why Use Zustand

Before we dive deeper into Zustand, let’s briefly discuss the need for state management in React Native applications and why Zustand is a compelling choice.

In React Native, as in React, you often encounter scenarios where multiple components need to access and modify shared data. Managing this shared data and ensuring that changes are reflected across the app can be challenging. This is where state management libraries like Zustand come into play.

Related read: What is React State Management & its type?

Zustand Offers Several Advantages

Minimal API: Zustand provides a minimal and easy-to-learn API for the developers to use Zustand.

Performance: Zustand is designed for optimal performance. It leverages modern JavaScript features like proxies and hooks to achieve efficient state updates.

Immutability and Immer Integration: Zustand simplifies state updates by integrating with Immer, a library that allows you to work with immutable data structures in a more intuitive way.

Now that we’ve established why Zustand is worth considering, let’s explore its core concepts and features.

Core Concepts of Zustand

Stores

In Zustand, an optimized library for React Native applications the state is organized into stores. Each store is a JavaScript object that represents a specific area of your application’s state. You can create multiple stores to manage your app’s data.

Here’s an example to create a store in Zustand-

import create from 'zustand';

const useStore = create((set) => ({
count: 0,
increment: () => set((state) => ({ count: state.count + 1 })),
}));

In this example, `useStore` is a custom hook that provides access to the state and actions defined within the store.

State

State in Zustand is represented as properties within a store. In the example above, the `count` property represents a piece of state. You can define as many state properties as needed within a store.

Actions

Actions are functions that allow you to modify the state within a store. In the `useStore` example, the `increment` function is an action that increments the `count` state.

Here’s how you can use the `useStore` hook to access state and actions within your components-

import React from 'react';
import { View, Text, Button } from 'react-native';
import { useStore } from './useStore'; // Import the custom hook

const CounterComponent = () => {
const { count, increment } = useStore(); // Access state and actions

return (
<View>
<Text>Count: {count}</Text>
<Button title="Increment" onPress={increment} />
</View>
);
};

export default CounterComponent;
By using the `useStore` hook, you can easily access and update the state within your components.

Subscribe and Unsubscribe

Zustand automatically subscribes and unsubscribes components to changes in state, which is particularly beneficial for React Native applications. This means that when the state within a store is updated, all subscribed components will re-render to reflect the changes. This behaviour is similar to how React’s `useState` and `useEffect` work.

Getting Started with Zustand in React Native

Now that you have an understanding of Zustand’s core concepts, let’s get started with using it in a React Native application.

Installation

Use the following command to use Zustand in your project-

npm install zustand

Creating a Store

1. Create a new file for your store, e.g., `counterStore.js`.

2. Define the store using Zustand’s `create` function:

// counterStore.js

import create from 'zustand';

const useCounterStore = create((set) => ({
count: 0,
increment: () => set((state) => ({ count: state.count + 1 })),
decrement: () => set((state) => ({ count: state.count - 1 })),
}));

export default useCounterStore;
3. Import and use the store within your components:

// CounterComponent.js

import React from 'react';
import { View, Text, Button } from 'react-native';
import useCounterStore from './counterStore'; // Import the store

const CounterComponent = () => {
const { count, increment, decrement } = useCounterStore(); // Access state and actions

return (
<View>
<Text>Count: {count}</Text>
<Button title="Increment" onPress={increment} />
<Button title="Decrement" onPress={decrement} />
</View>
);
};

export default CounterComponent;

Consuming the Store

In your root component (e.g., `App.js`), wrap your application with the Zustand provider:

// App.js

import React from 'react';
import { View, StyleSheet } from 'react-native';
import { Provider } from 'zustand';
import CounterComponent from './CounterComponent'; // Import your component

const App = () => {
return (
<Provider>
<View style={styles.container}>
<CounterComponent />
</View>
</Provider>
);
};

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
container: {
flex: 1,
justifyContent: 'center',
alignItems: 'center',
},
});

export default App;