tips.md

Tips and Tricks

Clearing Reactotron

You can clear Reactotron by calling clear().

For example, let's say in React Native you want to clear the logs everytime you start up? Add this to your app's ReactotronConfig.js:

Reactotron.clear()

Running In Production

Don't... said the stranger on the Internet pretending he knows what's best for you.

Please install reactotron-react-native, reactotron-react-js, and others with --save-dev instead of --save.

React Native

For React Native apps, there's several good reasons.

1. Battery life. WebSockets will drain the battery as the connection stays open.
2. Privacy. Your app might store stuff in state that the user realize... like social tokens.
3. Security. You can literally remote control parts of the app. Yikes!

Surround your Reactotron activities with:

if (__DEV__) {
  // ZAP!
}

This means you'll need to be careful to use require() instead of import as import in ES6 are hoisted!

Flip Flop Alert! Technically it's possible just to NPM --save. Maybe you want to do some debugging on a production build on a local device? That's cool. Just please, don't ship without conditionally shutting off Reactotron.connect(). <3

React JS

For web sites, well... CORS browser security will pretty much shut you down anyway.

If you're running ReactJS and webpack, anything inside false expressions will get nuked in production builds.

if (process.env.NODE_ENV !== 'production') {
  // ZAP!
}

Piggybacking on Console

In ES6, you must import Reactotron at the top of your file before using it like this:

import Reactotron from 'reactotron-react-native'
// or import Reactotron from 'reactotron-react-native'

And later on in your file, you type:

Reactotron.log('something really interesting happened')

You can cut out the top step by attaching to the console object in your ReactotronConfig.js file (or wherever you setup).

// horrible, but useful hack.... oh come on, don't look at me like that... it's JavaScript :|
console.tron = Reactotron

Now, anywhere in your app if you want to log something?

console.tron.log('Sweet Freedom!')

Fancy Console Magic 🎩 ✨

You can add an important indicator light by calling logImportant. E.g.

// or Reactotron.log
console.tron.logImportant('I am important')

Additionally, you can access a more advanced message and indicator with display.

// or Reactotron.display
console.tron.display({
  name: 'Tacos',
  value: {a: 1, b: [1,2,3]},
  preview: 'when you click here, it might surprise you!',
  important: true,
  image: 'http://placekitten.com/g/400/400'
})

Redux and Immutable data

If you're using reactotron-redux and an immutable library such as seamless-immutable you need to make sure you transform your state back into an immutable object when using State Snapshots.

To do so you can use the onRestore callback like this:

  .use(reactotronRedux({
    // Fires when Reactotron uploads a new copy of the state tree.
    onRestore: state => Immutable(state)
  }))

However if only some of your reducers are immutable and the rest are mutable you can selectively transform the state like this:

  .use(reactotronRedux({
    // Fires when Reactotron uploads a new copy of the state tree.
    onRestore: state => {
      return { ...Immutable(state), nav: state.nav }
    }
  }))

This will nav mutable. Note this is what you want to do when using react-navigation's default reducer.