spread operator vs immutable.js

Question

It seems like when using redux with react, immutable.js has become almost a industry standard. My question is, aren't we making changes to our redux states immutably when we are using the spread operator? For example,

const reducer = (state=initialState, action) => {
    switch(action.type){
        case actionType.SOME_ACTION:
            return {
                ...state,
                someState: state.someState.filter(etc=>etc)
            }
    }

Isn't the way I am setting the state with redux immutable? What is the benefit of using immutable.js OVER spread operator way of making objects immutable?

Apologies if this question has been asked, but I couldn't find the answer that satisfied me. I understand the benefits of immutable objects, but not the importance of using the immutable.js library over the dot operator.

Scouring

Answer 1

Short Answer

Yes! The ES6 spread operator can be used as a replacement for immutable.js entirely, but there is one major caveat, you must maintain situational awareness at all times.

VERY Long Answer

You, and your fellow developers, will be 100% responsible for maintaining immutability, rather than letting immutable.js take care of it for you. Here's a breakdown of how you can manage an immutable state all by yourself using the ES6 'spread operator', and its various functions like filter and map.

The following will explore removing and adding values to an array or object in an immutable and mutated way. I log out the initialState and newState in each example to demonstrate if we've mutated initialState. The reason this is important, is because Redux will not instruct the UI to re-render if the initialState and newState are exactly the same.

Note: Immutable.js would crash the application if you tried any of the mutated solutions below.

Remove element from Array

Immutable way

const initialState = {
  members: ['Pete', 'Paul', 'George', 'John']
}
const reducer = (state, action) => {
  switch(action.type){
case 'REMOVE_MEMBER':
  return {
    ...state,
    members: state.members.filter(
      member => member !== action.member
    )
  }
  }
}
const newState = reducer(
  initialState,
  {type: 'REMOVE_MEMBER', member: 'Pete'}
);

console.log('initialState', initialState);
console.log('newState', newState);

Mutated way

const initialState = {
  members: ['Pete', 'Paul', 'George', 'John']
}
const reducer = (state, action) => {
  switch(action.type){
case 'REMOVE_MEMBER':
  state.members.forEach((member, i) => {
    if (member === action.member) {
      state.members.splice(i, 1)
    }
  })
  return {
    ...state,
    members: state.members
  }
  }
}
const newState = reducer(
  initialState,
  {type: 'REMOVE_MEMBER', member: 'Pete'}
);

console.log('initialState', initialState);
console.log('newState', newState);

Add element to Array

Immutable way

const initialState = {
  members: ['Paul', 'George', 'John']
}
const reducer = (state, action) => {
  switch(action.type){
case 'ADD_MEMBER':
  return {
    ...state,
    members: [...state.members, action.member]
  }
  }
}
const newState = reducer(
  initialState,
  {type: 'ADD_MEMBER', member: 'Ringo'}
);

console.log('initialState', initialState);
console.log('newState', newState);

Mutated way

const initialState = {
  members: ['Paul', 'George', 'John']
}
const reducer = (state, action) => {
  switch(action.type){
case 'ADD_MEMBER':
  state.members.push(action.member);
  return {
    ...state,
    members: state.members
  }
  }
}
const newState = reducer(
  initialState,
  {type: 'ADD_MEMBER', member: 'Ringo'}
);

console.log('initialState', initialState);
console.log('newState', newState);

Update Array

Immutable way

const initialState = {
  members: ['Paul', 'Pete', 'George', 'John']
}
const reducer = (state, action) => {
  switch(action.type){
case 'UPDATE_MEMBER':
  return {
    ...state,
    members: state.members.map(member => member === action.member ? action.replacement : member)
  }
  }
}
const newState = reducer(
  initialState,
  {type: 'UPDATE_MEMBER', member: 'Pete', replacement: 'Ringo'}
);

console.log('initialState', initialState);
console.log('newState', newState);

Mutated way

const initialState = {
  members: ['Paul', 'Pete', 'George', 'John']
}
const reducer = (state, action) => {
  switch(action.type){
case 'UPDATE_MEMBER':
  state.members.forEach((member, i) => {
    if (member === action.member) {
      state.members[i] = action.replacement;
    }
  })
  return {
    ...state,
    members: state.members
  }
  }
}
const newState = reducer(
  initialState,
  {type: 'UPDATE_MEMBER', member: 'Pete', replacement: 'Ringo'}
);

console.log('initialState', initialState);
console.log('newState', newState);

Merge Arrays

Immutable way

const initialState = {
  members: ['Paul', 'Ringo']
}
const reducer = (state, action) => {
  switch(action.type){
case 'MERGE_MEMBERS':
  return {
    ...state,
    members: [...state.members, ...action.members]
  }
  }
}
const newState = reducer(
  initialState,
  {type: 'MERGE_MEMBERS', members: ['George', 'John']}
);

console.log('initialState', initialState);
console.log('newState', newState);

Mutated way

const initialState = {
  members: ['Paul', 'Ringo']
}
const reducer = (state, action) => {
  switch(action.type){
case 'MERGE_MEMBERS':
  action.members.forEach(member => state.members.push(member))
  return {
    ...state,
    members: state.members
  }
  }
}
const newState = reducer(
  initialState,
  {type: 'MERGE_MEMBERS', members: ['George', 'John']}
);

console.log('initialState', initialState);
console.log('newState', newState);

The above examples of mutating an array may seem like obvious bad practices to a seasoned developer, but an easy pitfall for someone new on the scene. We'd hope that any of the Mutated way code snippets would get caught in code review, but that's not always the case. Let's talk a little bit about objects, which are more cumbersome when handling immutability on your own.

Remove from Object

Immutable way

const initialState = {
  members: {
paul: {
  name: 'Paul',
  instrument: 'Guitar'
},
stuart: {
  name: 'Stuart',
  instrument: 'Bass'
}
  }
}
const reducer = (state, action) => {
  switch(action.type){
case 'REMOVE_MEMBER':
  let { [action.member]: _, ...members } = state.members
  return {
    ...state,
    members
  }
  }
}
const newState = reducer(
  initialState,
  {type: 'REMOVE_MEMBER', member: 'stuart'}
);

console.log('initialState', initialState);
console.log('newState', newState);

Mutated way

const initialState = {
  members: {
paul: {
  name: 'Paul',
  instrument: 'Guitar'
},
stuart: {
  name: 'Stuart',
  instrument: 'Bass'
}
  }
}
const reducer = (state, action) => {
  switch(action.type){
case 'REMOVE_MEMBER':
  delete state.members[action.member]
  return {
    ...state,
    members: state.members
  }
  }
}
const newState = reducer(
  initialState,
  {type: 'REMOVE_MEMBER', member: 'stuart'}
);

console.log('initialState', initialState);
console.log('newState', newState);

Update Object

Immutable way

const initialState = {
  members: {
paul: {
  name: 'Paul',
  instrument: 'Guitar'
},
ringo: {
  name: 'George',
  instrument: 'Guitar'
}
  }
}
const reducer = (state, action) => {
  switch(action.type){
case 'CHANGE_INSTRUMENT':
  return {
    ...state,
    members: {
      ...state.members,
      [action.key]: {
        ...state.members[action.member],
        instrument: action.instrument
      }
    }
  }
  }
}
const newState = reducer(
  initialState,
  {type: 'CHANGE_INSTRUMENT', member: 'paul', instrument: 'Bass'}
);

console.log('initialState', initialState);
console.log('newState', newState);

Mutated way

const initialState = {
  members: {
paul: {
  name: 'Paul',
  instrument: 'Guitar'
},
ringo: {
  name: 'George',
  instrument: 'Guitar'
}
  }
}
const reducer = (state, action) => {
  switch(action.type){
case 'CHANGE_INSTRUMENT':
  state.members[action.member].instrument = action.instrument
  return {
    ...state,
    members: state.members
  }
  }
}
const newState = reducer(
  initialState,
  {type: 'CHANGE_INSTRUMENT', member: 'paul', instrument: 'Bass'}
);

console.log('initialState', initialState);
console.log('newState', newState);

If you've made it down this far, congratulations! I know this has been a long winded post, but I felt it was important to demonstrate all the Mutated ways that you'll need to prevent yourself without Immutable.js. One huge advantage to using Immutable.js, beyond preventing you from writing bad code, is the helper methods, like mergeDeep and updateIn

Immutable.JS

mergeDeep

const initialState = Immutable.fromJS({
  members: {
    paul: {
      name: 'Paul',
      instrument: 'Guitar'
    },
    ringo: {
      name: 'George',
      instrument: 'Guitar'
    }
  }
})
const reducer = (state, action) => {
  switch (action.type) {
    case 'ADD_MEMBERS':
      return state.mergeDeep({members: action.members})
  }
}
const newState = reducer(
  initialState,
  {
    type: 'ADD_MEMBERS',
    members: {
      george: { name: 'George', instrument: 'Guitar' },
      john: { name: 'John', instrument: 'Guitar' }
    }
  }
);

console.log('initialState', initialState);
console.log('newState', newState);

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/immutable/3.8.2/immutable.min.js"></script>

updateIn

const initialState = Immutable.fromJS({
  members: {
    paul: {
      name: 'Paul',
      instrument: 'Guitar'
    },
    ringo: {
      name: 'George',
      instrument: 'Guitar'
    }
  }
})
const reducer = (state, action) => {
  switch (action.type) {
    case 'CHANGE_INSTRUMENT':
      return state.updateIn(['members', action.member, 'instrument'], instrument => action.instrument)
  }
}
const newState = reducer(
  initialState,
  {type: 'CHANGE_INSTRUMENT', member: 'paul', instrument: 'Bass'}
);

console.log('initialState', initialState);
console.log('newState', newState);

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/immutable/3.8.2/immutable.min.js"></script>

Quizzical

Yes, but isnt the spread syntax achieving what immutable.js is trying to achieve? I am confused why immutable.js has so much hype and support behind it, when something similar can be achieved with the spread operator – Scouring

@YoungMoon, check out my updated answer with a detailed breakdown of how you can use pure ES6 to achieve immutability. – Quizzical

Forgot to thank you for the most amazing answer. Thank you – Scouring

Answer 2

Isn't the way I am setting the state with Redux immutable?

In your example code (assuming the real function passed to filter doesn’t do any mutation), yes.

What is the benefit of using immutable.js OVER spread operator way of making objects immutable?

Two major reasons:

1. It’s not (easily) possible to accidentally mutate an Immutable collection object, as the public API does not permit it. Whereas with built-in JS collections, it is. Deep-freezing (recursively calling Object.freeze) can help this a bit.

2. Efficient* use of immutable updates with built-in collections can be challenging. Immutable.js uses tries internally to make updates more efficient than is possible with vanilla-usage of native collections.

If you want to use built-in collections, consider using Immer, which gives a nicer API for immutable updates while also freezing the objects it creates, helping mitigate the first issue (but not the second).

_{* Efficient meaning time complexity of e.g. object construction and GC runs due to increased object churn.}

Wizard