babel-plugin-mutable-react-state

(WIP) Use mutable variable declarations as state in react

UNSTABLE The plugin is still under development so isn't recommended for production

Caveats (for now)

Check this issue

Docs

Web Documentation

Notes

• While the caveats exist due to the extensive types of expressions that javascript has, it's recommended that you use a cloned variable and then just assigned the modification to the reactive variable if you plan to use it right now.

function Component() {
  let $text = ''

  return (
    <>
      <input
        value={$text}
        onChange={(e) => {
          $text = e.target.value
          // some code

          // won't work...
          $text = $text.toUpperCase()
        }}
      />
    </>
  )
}

// CAN be written as

function Component() {
  let $text = ''

  return (
    <>
      <input
        value={$text}
        onChange={(e) => {
          const val = e.target.value
          // some code

          // will work...
          $text = val.toUpperCase()
        }}
      />
    </>
  )
}

• This is still react state so you cannot do dependent state updates at once,

// the value of `length` will still be the older value of $text and not the latest one
changeHandler(){
  $text = value
  $length = $text.length
}

// you'll still have to consider that dependent values need to be handled with useEffect

useEffect(()=>{
  $length = $text.length
},[$text])

changeHandler(){
  $text = value
}

Install

The plugin assumes you already have jsx enabled on babel or are using preset-react in your setup.

npm i babel-plugin-mutable-react-state
# or
yarn add babel-plugin-mutable-react-state

// .babelrc
[
  {
    "plugins": ["babel-plugin-mutable-react-state"]
  }
]

Usage

You write state with a prefix $ and that's converted to useState accordingly.

import * as React from 'react'

function Component() {
  let $a = 1

  const onPress = () => {
    $a += 1
  }

  return (
    <div>
      <p>{$a}</p>
      <button onClick={onPress}>Press</button>
    </div>
  )
}

 ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓

import * as React from 'react'

function Component() {
  const [a, setA] = React.useState(1)

  const onPress = () => {
    setA(a + 1)
  }

  return (
    <div>
      <p>{a}</p>
      <button onClick={onPress}>Press</button>
    </div>
  )
}

License

MIT