Replacing an object in an object array in Redux Store using Javascript/Lodash - object

Question

I have an object array in a reducer that looks like this:
[
{id:1, name:Mark, email:mark#email.com},
{id:2, name:Paul, email:paul#gmail.com},
{id:3,name:sally, email:sally#email.com}
]
Below is my reducer. So far, I can add a new object to the currentPeople reducer via the following:
const INITIAL_STATE = { currentPeople:[]};
export default function(state = INITIAL_STATE, action) {
switch (action.type) {
case ADD_PERSON:
return {...state, currentPeople: [ ...state.currentPeople, action.payload]};
}
return state;
}
But here is where I'm stuck. Can I UPDATE a person via the reducer using lodash?
If I sent an action payload that looked like this:
{id:1, name:Eric, email:Eric#email.com}
Would I be able to replace the object with the id of 1 with the new fields?

Answer 1

Yes you can absolutely update an object in an array like you want to. And you don't need to change your data structure if you don't want to. You could add a case like this to your reducer:
case UPDATE_PERSON:
return {
...state,
currentPeople: state.currentPeople.map(person => {
if (person.id === action.payload.id) {
return action.payload;
}
return person;
}),
};
This can be be shortened as well, using implicit returns and a ternary:
case UPDATE_PERSON:
return {
...state,
currentPeople: state.currentPeople.map(person => (person.id === action.payload.id) ? action.payload : person),
};
Mihir's idea about mapping your data to an object with normalizr is certainly a possibility and technically it'd be faster to update the user with the reference instead of doing the loop (after initial mapping was done). But if you want to keep your data structure, this approach will work.
Also, mapping like this is just one of many ways to update the object, and requires browser support for Array.prototype.map(). You could use lodash indexOf() to find the index of the user you want (this is nice because it breaks the loop when it succeeds instead of just continuing as the .map would do), once you have the index you could overwrite the object directly using it's index. Make sure you don't mutate the redux state though, you'll need to be working on a clone if you want to assign like this: clonedArray[foundIndex] = action.payload;.

Answer 2

This is a good candidate for data normalization. You can effectively replace your data with the new one, if you normalize the data before storing it in your state tree.
This example is straight from Normalizr.
[{
id: 1,
title: 'Some Article',
author: {
id: 1,
name: 'Dan'
}
}, {
id: 2,
title: 'Other Article',
author: {
id: 1,
name: 'Dan'
}
}]
Can be normalized this way-
{
result: [1, 2],
entities: {
articles: {
1: {
id: 1,
title: 'Some Article',
author: 1
},
2: {
id: 2,
title: 'Other Article',
author: 1
}
},
users: {
1: {
id: 1,
name: 'Dan'
}
}
}
}
What's the advantage of normalization?
You get to extract the exact part of your state tree that you want.
For instance- You have an array of objects containing information about the articles. If you want to select a particular object from that array, you'll have to iterate through entire array. Worst case is that the desired object is not present in the array. To overcome this, we normalize the data.
To normalize the data, store the unique identifiers of each object in a separate array. Let's call that array as results.
result: [1, 2, 3 ..]
And transform the array of objects into an object with keys as the id(See the second snippet). Call that object as entities.
Ultimately, to access the object with id 1, simply do this- entities.articles["1"].
If you want to replace the old data with new data, you can do this-
entities.articles["1"] = newObj;

Answer 3

Use native splice method of array:
/*Find item index using lodash*/
var index = _.indexOf(currentPeople, _.find(currentPeople, {id: 1}));
/*Replace item at index using splice*/
arr.splice(index, 1, {id:1, name:'Mark', email:'mark#email.com'});