anagrius

anagrius

Hey,

I try to keep my application state free of derived state. So I don’t for instance have:

{a: 1, b: 2, sum: 3}

But rather compute the derived state when I need it.
In liveview applications you often need derived state while rendering HTML, and it natural to do the calculation once and store the derived state in assigns so it can be used with the @-notation:

<div><%= @sum %></div>

The alternative is of course:

<div><%= @a + @b %></div>

in this trivial example, but often it is much more complex calculations involving many inputs, and these have to be passed to the calculation function:

<div><%= calculate_derived_state(@a, @b, @settings.displayFormat, @x, @y, @z) %></div>

Again fine if it is used once or twice.

Reassigning assigns in function components is allowed which means I can do:

def some_component(assigns) do
    assigns = assign(assigns, :sum, assigns.a + assigns.b)
    ~H"""
    <div><%= @sum %>
    """
end

But this is not allowed in the top-level render function of a liveview or live-component.

So, my question: Why would I not just do:

def render(assigns) do
    ~H"""
    <.render_inner {assigns} />
    """
end

def render_inner(assigns) do
      assigns = assign(assigns, :sum, assigns.a + assigns.b)
     ~H"""
      <div><%= @sum %></div>
     """
end

I understand that sum is calculated each render, but that is a small cost to avoid managing stale derived state.

Is there some hidden cost I don’t see? Doe passing {assigns} to render_inner for instance for the rendering of the entire view-tree or something.
I understand that render_inner must be recalculated on each render - but that should be equivalent to what render would do anyway.

Showing Posts 4 to 1

sodapopcan

sodapopcan

Oh right you are. Should probably report that as it’s quite confusing, especially when it does indeed say “can’t” when you clearly can. I’ve been doing this for years at this point, though, lol. Only once in a while, but never thought too much about it.

anagrius

anagrius OP

Unlike LiveView’s render/1 callback, a function component can modify the assigns it receives via the assign/2 , assign/3 , assign_new/3 , and update/3 functions. Therefore, you can assign the computed values before declaring your template.

Maybe it is just outdated? Since it works perfectly well in render/1. It also says you “can’t” which you can, not that you shouldn’t.

steffend

steffend

Phoenix Core Team

You’re not wrong. Using the assign function in the render function of a LV or LC is perfectly valid.

sodapopcan

sodapopcan

Citation needed for this one! Maybe this is a new thing as my project is not using 1.0 yet but this is the first I’ve heard of this! I could be wrong.

Putting the raw assigns variable directly in a template means that you won’t get the benefit of change-tracking. This effects what get sent back over the wire, so you will end up with really inefficient diffs.

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