Sometimes I have a hard time understanding the "verbs" or method names of OOP these days.
Note the following is just to use Redux alone, without the mechanism of hooking it up with React.
For example, in Redux, if you use the most basic form:
store = createStore(reducer);
store.dispatch(action);
store.getState();
store.subscribe(fn);
For quite some time, I didn't quite get it what dispatch() means? The store "dispatch" something, like the store is sending out something?
So later on, I found that the method names are from the "I" perspective:
- Store, I want to dispatch an action to you
- Store, I want to get state from you
- Store, I want to subscribe to you with an observer (or listener)
If we use the Smalltalk way of naming, which is one of the earliest object oriented programming languages, it is:
store.takeAction()
store.giveState() // or store.state()
store.addEventListener()
It goes naturally:
- Store, take this action
- Store, give state to me
- Store, add an event listener
You can see window.addEventListener() is using such naming too.
Did I misunderstand something? Not that I want to nitpick... but it is the use of some terms that can make me confused for quite a while, and then I found out, "oh... the name... it actually is from the perspective of the user of the object, instead of a verb or message to send to the object." (for a long time, I thought the store is to dispatch or send out some action to some where).
Top comments (2)
Hey jianlin,
Interesting, I never took the time to think about this much.
But I think that "dispatch" refers not the programmer dispatching the action to the store, but rather the store dispatching the action to its reducer.
I guess that can make sense...
Would we think of a store to be an object, that "has" a reducer (which is a function, not an object), which is a "rule book" that says how the state should change according to the action.
The
getState()andsubscribe()part are easier to understand.If we consider all method names as an interface, it is like, it is between the object and the outside world. So
dispatchsounds somewhat imperative and it is the internal working of the store. The outside world may not care about how the action is dispatched to the reducer. All the outside world cares is, I tell the store the action, and now change the state according to the rule book. From the standpoint of the outside world, it is:so it translates to
But I guess it is one way to look at it.
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