Why Are They Called ‘Reducers’?

If you’ve worked with Redux or are diving into the world of state management in JavaScript, you’ve probably come across the term “reducer”. But why are they called ‘reducers’?

The concept of a reducer comes from the Array.reduce() method in JavaScript, which allows you to process an array of values one at a time and return a single final result. Essentially, it “reduces” the array to one value.

Here’s a simple example:

In this example, addNumbers is our “reduce callback” function. It takes a previous result and the current item processes them and returns a new result. The process is quite similar to how Redux reducers work.

A Redux reducer function also takes a “previous result” (the state) and the “current item” (the action object), and returns a new state. It’s the same reduce concept applied to state management over time.

Here’s a Redux analogy:

With Redux, actions are reduced over the lifetime of your app, updating the state incrementally.

For a more detailed explanation, check out the Redux documentation.

Conclusion

The term “reducer” is aptly named, as it perfectly encapsulates the process of taking multiple inputs and reducing them to a single output, whether it’s an array of numbers or a sequence of actions in a Redux store.

#JavaScript #React #Redux #Reducer #StateManagement