Understanding State Management

Before we discuss state management, it is important to know what ‘state’ is. Once you understand the concept of the state, it will be easier to understand state management.

‘State’ can simply be referred to as some part of your application, for example, the list of customers, the list of products being fetched from a database, etc. The events happening in the browser are also a type of state. The state can be from the backend components, frontend components, or the database.

Now that we have got an overview of the state, let us discuss what state management is.

What is State Management?

State management is about implementing a design pattern with the help of which we can synchronize the state of the application throughout the application components. This design pattern makes the implementation of services and handling of data from the database quite easy.

To be brief and precise, it’s a process of maintaining knowledge of an application’s inputs across various related data flows to understand the condition of the app at any given moment. Input defines the information put into the program by the user, and state refers to the condition of an application according to its stored inputs.

Apps, primarily eCommerce ones, process information like orders, payments, invoices, etc. This processing depends on the application’s state and leads to changes in the balance of inventories, accounts, and financial ledgers. State Management helps app developers identify the state of the application to make sure that the adjusted changes reflect the real-world context and business processes.

How Does State Management Work?

State management has two models- the frontend or the client-side model and the backend or the server-side model.

In the frontend state management, the state of the program is maintained by the user’s own app or browser, usually by having some buttons or UI features enabled or disabled and sending the state along with the message. The UI connection makes sure that the user and the application are in sync throughout the session.

On the other hand, in the backend state management, an external data structure is used by the application component to record the final state after the activities have been processed. The next message process will start when the previous state is retrieved from the database.

Advantages of State Management

1. State management minimizes the number of HTTP requests sent to the server for fetching and retrieval of data.

2. The state of the entire application is available in a single place, and thus you don’t have to access the single state from different places.

3. State management makes code maintenance quite effortless. Additionally, it improves code quality by reducing the size and making it more readable.

4. The server would be requested only and only when there is a change or update in the data.

5. Helps perform two tasks- sending data to the server for updating the database and updating the overall state of the application with the help of the RX.JS library.

When Should You Implement State Management?

Implementing state management is a difficult and time-consuming task. So, it is important to know the right time to apply it, which is usually in two cases-

1. If the app consists of a huge number of components and multiple requests are being sent to the server-side for data retrieval, it is compulsory to implement state management in that case. This will enhance the user experience and the application’s performance in terms of speed to a great extent.

2. If the data used throughout the application is redundant, then also you should implement state management. For instance, if the list of customers is used in invoice creation and also sales report generation, then there won’t be any need to fetch those customer details again and again from the database.

There are a number of ways you can implement state management in your application. Let me walk you through the way to doing so in the popular JavaScript frameworks like Angular, React, and Vue.

Also Read: React vs Angular: Which is Better and Why?

State Management in React

Redux is the go-to option for React developers to implement state management in the React applications.

State Management in Angular

There are various libraries for state management in Angular applications, such as NGRX. It’s pretty straightforward and easy to implement. It is well-documented and instructions are written in a very clear and concise manner.

State Management in Vue

For the Vue.js application, there is a state management library + pattern, which is VUEX.

Summing Up

State Management has great significance in large-scale applications. It also makes the architecture and quality of code much better. By managing the state, one can optimize the application performance in the perfect manner.