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JavaScript Building Applications with React and Redux Actions, Dispatch, and Reducers. Oh my! Intro to Reducers

Brendan Whiting
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Brendan Whiting
Front End Web Development Techdegree Graduate 84,738 Points

Why does it seem like we're referencing a folder that doesn't exist?

We have this code:

export const ADD_PLAYER = 'player/ADD_PLAYER';

There is no 'player' folder. I don't understand what this string does.

2 Answers

It is not a reference, but a simple string. Which means that we do not reference any folder, but simply set the name of the action that will be defined later.

Not sure if this answers your question, but it's in the Redux FAQs:

http://redux.js.org/docs/faq/Actions.html#actions-string-constants

"As with state, serializable actions enable several of Redux's defining features, such as time travel debugging, and recording and replaying actions. Using something like a Symbol for the type value or using instanceof checks for actions themselves would break that. Strings are serializable and easily self-descriptive, and so are a better choice. Note that it is okay to use Symbols, Promises, or other non-serializable values in an action if the action is intended for use by middleware. Actions only need to be serializable by the time they actually reach the store and are passed to the reducers.

We can't reliably enforce serializable actions for performance reasons, so Redux only checks that every action is a plain object, and that the type is defined. The rest is up to you, but you might find that keeping everything serializable helps debug and reproduce issues.

Encapsulating and centralizing commonly used pieces of code is a key concept in programming. While it is certainly possible to manually create action objects everywhere, and write each type value by hand, defining reusable constants makes maintaining code easier. If you put constants in a separate file, you can check your import statements against typos so you can't accidentally use the wrong string."