Efficient State Management in React with Zustand and TypeScript

4 min readMar 12, 2023

Introduction

State management is a fundamental part of modern front-end development, especially when building complex and dynamic applications. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of state management libraries, frameworks, and patterns, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. One of the most popular state management libraries in the React ecosystem is Zustand, a lightweight state management library for React developed by Alexander Sidorenko. In this article, we will explore Zustand and how it can be used with TypeScript to manage state in a React application.

What is Zustand?

Zustand is a state management library for React that uses the Context API and hooks to manage state. It provides a simple and flexible API for creating and updating state, and it is designed to be easy to use and understand. Zustand is built on top of the popular React library, which means it can be used in any React application.

One of the key features of Zustand is its ability to create and manage complex state structures. Zustand allows you to define a global state object that can be composed of multiple sub-states. Each sub-state can be updated independently of the others, and changes to the sub-state are automatically propagated to any components that depend on it.

Using Zustand with TypeScript

TypeScript is a popular language for building large-scale JavaScript applications. Its strong typing system provides better tooling, error checking, and code completion, which can make development more efficient and less error-prone. Zustand works seamlessly with TypeScript, and in fact, the library is written in TypeScript.

To use Zustand with TypeScript, we first need to define the shape of our state object. We can do this using an interface or a type alias:

interface AppState {
  count: number;
  loggedIn: boolean;
  user?: {
    name: string;
    email: string;
  };
}

type AppStore = {
  state: AppState;
  increment: () => void;
  decrement: () => void;
  login: () => void;
  logout: () => void;
};

In this example, we define an interface AppState that represents the shape of our state object. Our state object has three properties: count, loggedIn, and user. The user property is optional and represents an object with two properties: name and email.

Next, we define a type called AppStore that represents our Zustand store. The AppStore type has five properties: state, increment, decrement, login, and logout. The state property represents our global state object of type AppState. The increment, decrement, login, and logout properties are functions that allow us to update the state.

Now that we have defined our state object and store type, we can create our Zustand store. We do this using the createStore function provided by Zustand:

import create from 'zustand';

const useStore = create<AppStore>((set) => ({
  state: { count: 0, loggedIn: false },
  increment: () => set((state) => ({ state: { ...state, count: state.count + 1 } })),
  decrement: () => set((state) => ({ state: { ...state, count: state.count - 1 } })),
  login: () => set({ state: { loggedIn: true } }),
  logout: () => set({ state: { loggedIn: false, user: undefined } }),
}));

In this example, we import the create function from Zustand and call it with our AppStore type. The createStore function takes a single argument, which is a function that returns an object representing the initial state and the update functions. Inside the function, we use the set function provided by Zustand to update the state. The set function takes a function that receives the current state and returns the new state. We use the spread operator (...) to create a copy of the state object and update only the properties we want to change.

Now that we have created our Zustand store, we can use it in our components. We do this using the useStore hook provided by Zustand:

import { useStore } from './store';

function Counter() {
  const { state, increment, decrement } = useStore();

  return (
    <div>
      <p>Count: {state.count}</p>
      <button onClick={increment}>Increment</button>
      <button onClick={decrement}>Decrement</button>
    </div>
  );
}

In this example, we import the useStore hook from our store module and call it to get access to the state and update functions. We use destructuring to extract the state, increment, and decrement properties from the returned object.

We can then use the state object to display the current count value and the increment and decrement functions to update the count.

Conclusion

Zustand is a lightweight and flexible state management library for React that can be easily used with TypeScript. Its simple API and ability to create and manage complex state structures make it a popular choice among React developers. By using Zustand with TypeScript, we can benefit from TypeScript’s strong typing system and make our code more efficient and less error-prone.

References

Zustand official documentation: https://github.com/pmndrs/zustand
Zustand and TypeScript blog post by Alexander Sidorenko: https://alexandersirotkin.com/blog/zustand-and-typescript
State management in React with Zustand and TypeScript tutorial by Alena Holligan: https://dev.to/alenaholligan/state-management-in-react-with-zustand-and-typescript-2l1j
Building a reactive web app with Zustand and TypeScript tutorial by Simon Knittel: https://itnext.io/building-a-reactive-web-app-with-zustand-and-typescript-2ce14da0e615
React State Management with Zustand and TypeScript video tutorial by Leigh Halliday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0gkmE5p7VY

I hope these resources are helpful in your journey of learning Zustand and TypeScript!

Efficient State Management in React with Zustand and TypeScript

Written by Derry Dwi