Basic concepts

• Each type of data is a "table" in the state
• Each "table" should store individual items in an object, with IDs as keys and items as the values
• Any reference to an item is it's ID
• Arrays of IDs is used to indicate ordering

{
    posts : {
        byId : {
            "post1" : {
                id : "post1",
                author : "user1",
                body : "......",
                comments : ["comment2"]    
            },
            "post2" : {
                id : "post2",
                author : "user2",
                body : "......",
                comments : ["comment1"]    
            }
        }
        allIds : ["post1", "post2"]
    },
    comments : {
        byId : {
            "comment1" : {
                id : "comment1",
                author : "user2",
                comment : ".....",
            },
            "comment2" : {
                id : "comment2",
                author : "user3",
                comment : ".....",
            }
        },
        allIds : ["comment1", "comment2"]
    },
    users : {
        byId : {
            "user1" : {
                username : "user1",
                name : "User 1",
            }
            "user2" : {
                username : "user2",
                name : "User 2",
            }
        },
        allIds : ["user1", "user2"]
    }
}

Achievements

• Update item in only one place by making a new copy of the item
• The reducer logic does not have to deal with deep levels of nesting
• Logic for retrieving or updating a item is simple and consistent

Normalizing Nested Data

• Data needs to be transformed into a normalized shape before it can be included in the state tree
• We can define schema types and relations and use normalizr to get normalized transformation of the response from schema and response data