What is the Difference between Mobx, Redux and React Context API?

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Redux and MobX are two of the most popular external libraries that address state management in frontend applications

React is a popular JavaScript library. It is also the foundation of React Native. Along with Angular, it has been instrumental in the latest JavaSript MVC revolution taking place. In this article, we are going to break down the difference between Redux and other versions of React and how each one accomplishes the goal of preserving data by making it easier for us to understand what is at play behind the scenes.

Introduction

When it comes to state management in React, there are three main options: MobX, Redux, and the React Context API. So, what’s the difference between these three options?

MobX is a library that helps make state management simple and scalable by automating the tracking of changes to your application state. This means that you don’t need to write any extra code to keep track of changes yourself – MobX takes care of it for you.

Redux is a library that helps manage application state by providing a single store for all of your application data. This store can be accessed by any component in your application and will emit events when the data in it changes.

The React Context API is a built-in way of managing the state in React components. It provides a way to pass data through the component tree without having to explicitly pass props down at every level.

So, which one should you use? The answer depends on your specific needs. If you need a simple solution with minimal overhead, then MobX may be the best option for you. If you need a more robust solution that offers more control over how state is managed, then Redux may be a better choice.

What is MobX?

MobX is a JavaScript library that helps you to easily decorate your existing code and make it more reactive. It provides an unobtrusive, reactive programming model that can be used with any other JavaScript library or framework.

MobX is very simple to use. To make your code reactive, you just need to decorate your data with observable and actions. Once your data is observable, MobX will automatically track all the dependencies and update the components that are using this data.

There are many benefits of using MobX over other state management libraries like Redux. For one, MobX is much simpler to use and understand. It also has very good performance thanks to its optimizations. And lastly, it doesn’t require any boilerplate code unlike Redux.

If you’re looking for a robust, battle-tested state management library for your React apps, then I would recommend giving MobX a try.

What is Redux?

Redux is a JavaScript library for managing application state. It is often used with React, but can be used with any other JavaScript framework. Redux is similar to Mobx in that it allows you to use React components to manage your application state. However, Redux is different from Mobx in that it uses a unidirectional data flow. This means that data can only flow from the store to the component, and not from the component to the store.

Redux also has a few other benefits over Mobx. First, Redux comes with a build in DevTools extension that allows you to see your application’s state at any point in time. Second, because Redux uses a unidirectional data flow, it is easier to debug your application. Finally, Redux is more widely used than Mobx, which means there is more documentation and community support available.

What is React Context API?

The React Context API is a way to pass data through the component tree without having to pass props down manually at every level. The Context API was created as an alternative to using props to pass data down the component tree.

The React Context API consists of two parts:

1. a provider and

2. a consumer

The provider is used to set the value for a context and the consumer is used to get the value from the context.

The provider can be used in two ways:

1. using the static method createContext() or

2. using the component.

In both cases, you need to pass a default value as a prop to the provider. This default value will be used if a consumer doesn’t have a matching provider above it in the tree.

If you want to update the context value, you can do so by re-rendering the provider with a new value. The new value will be propagated down to the consumers that are below it in the tree.

Conclusion

The main difference between Mobx, Redux and React Context API is that Mobx manages the state using observable objects, while Redux uses plain JavaScript objects and React Context API uses React’s built-in Context feature. All three frameworks can be used to create scalable applications, but each has its own pros and cons that need to be considered before choosing which one to use.