BlazingState 7.0.0

BlazingState

This library provides powerful, robust, fast and yet simple state management with almost 0 boilerplate code.

You can use this library for any project, not just with Blazor.

Setup

Download the latest releases from NuGet.

AutoState

AutoState is very simple to use and allows you to write no boilerplate code for state changes! It automatically notifies your components to rerender if the state has changed.
Be advised that AutoState uses internal framework classes under the hood to provide this functionality which could change with every Blazor update and break AutoState. Use it at your own risk.

You don't need any other code inside your components for updating the state than this (more info in the next sections).

@attribute [AutoState]
@inject IStateObserver<MyData> MyData;
@code {
    // ..
}

Usage

Registering state observers

Start by registering your tracked type to your services.

Note: You can only register 1 state observer per type.

// Sample class for the examples
public class MyData
{
    public string SomeString { get; set; }
}

// Register BlazingState
builder.Services.AddBlazingState()
    // Registers a state observer of this type with no initial value
    .AddStateObserver<MyData>();
    // You can also initialize MyData with an initial value
    .AddStateObserver<MyData>(new MyData());
    // And even with an implementation factory
    .AddStateObserver<MyData>(sp =>
    {
        var service = sp.GetRequiredService<SomeOtherService>();
        return new MyData { SomeString = service.SomeText };
    });

For AutoState (WebAssembly only):

// Register BlazingState
builder.Services.AddBlazingState()
    .AddAutoState() // Add this before adding any state observer
    .AddStateObserver<MyData>();

If you don't use DI or another DI framework you can also manually instantiate your state observers:

var myStateObserver = new StateObserver<MyData>();

// And the same with an optional initial value
var myStateObserver = new StateObserver<MyData>(initialValue);

Subscribing/Unsubscribing from state changes

Add the following property to your razor component (or if using a normal class, just use normal di):

[Inject]
protected IStateObserver<MyData> MyData { get; set; } = null!;
// or
@inject IStateObserver<MyData> MyData

Subscribe using the OnParametersSet lifecycle event in Blazor (or use the ctor for normal classes):

protected override void OnParametersSet()
{
    // Now if another component changed the value property of MyData, this callback gets executed
    MyData.Register(this, () =>
    {
        // Rerender the UI
        StateHasChanged();
    });

    // You can also use async callbacks (actually faster since the sync version gets wrapped)
    // Keep in mind that you can only register 1 event per instance, so the previous callback gets overriden by the async one
    MyData.Register(this, async () =>
    {
        await SomeMethodAsync();
    });
}

For AutoState (WebAssembly only):
You only need to add the AutoStateAttribute and the state observer to the class. That's it!

@attribute [AutoState]
@inject IStateObserver<MyData> MyData;
@code {
    // ..
}

You don't have to unsubscribe from the event, as soon as the GC collects the instance, the event is removed.
If you really need the memory you should implement IDisposable and remove the event by yourself in the dispose method to cleanup resources immediately but that's not needed. An alternative would be to call GC.Collect(), as that forces the GC to perform a collection which removes all unused events but I wouldn't recommend this.

public void Dispose()
{
    MyData.Unregister(this);
}

Reading/displaying the value

<p>Current value of MyData: @MyData.Value.SomeString</p>

Updating the value of state observers

To update the current value of the observer you can just set the Value property of your observer.

// Assuming you have a method which gets called when you want to perform an update (e.g. clicking on a button):
public void UpdateValue(string newValue)
{
    MyData.Value = new MyData { SomeString = newValue };
    // Faster way (skips notifying this instance again)
    MyData.SetValueAsync(new MyData { SomeString = newValue }, this);
}

That's all! All subscribers are recieving your update automatically.

You can also just set some properties of the value instance and then manually notify all subscribers:

public async Task UpdateValue(string newValue)
{
    MyData.Value.SomeString = newValue;
    await MyData.NotifyStateChangedAsync(this); // Passing "this" skips notifying this instance again
}

This way you don't have to reallocate the object every time which can build up a lot of pressure on GC with bigger objects.

As mentioned at the start you can use an implementation factory for initialization. However sometimes you need to retrieve data from a data source (e.g. some web api) to initialize your value.
For that use case you could create your own component like InitMyData with following code:

@code {
    [Inject]
    protected IStateObserver<MyData> MyData { get; set; } = null!;

    protected override async Task OnParametersSetAsync()
    {
        // Getting data from server
        var name = await GetName();
        MyData.Value = new MyData { SomeString = name };
    }

    private async Task<string> GetName()
    {
        await Task.Delay(2000);
        return "Name from Server";
    }
}

And add this component at the top of your used layout.

<InitMyData />

Obviously you can do the same with non Blazor projects by getting the your observer instance, retrieving the needed data and setting the Value property of the state observer.

Sample projects

More samples can be found in the Samples directory.

License

BlazingState is licensed under Apache License 2.0, see LICENSE.txt for more information.