Is store.dispatch in Redux synchronous or asynchronous

When working with Redux, it is important to understand the behavior of the store.dispatch method. The question that often arises is whether store.dispatch is synchronous or asynchronous.

The short answer is that store.dispatch is synchronous. When an action is dispatched using store.dispatch, it is immediately processed by the Redux store and the state is updated accordingly. This means that any code that follows the store.dispatch call will only execute after the state has been updated.

Let’s take a look at an example to better understand this:

// Redux store configuration
const store = createStore(reducer);

// Dispatching an action
store.dispatch({ type: 'INCREMENT' });

// Accessing the updated state
console.log(store.getState()); // Output: { count: 1 }

// Code that follows the dispatch call
console.log('After dispatch');

In the example above, the INCREMENT action is dispatched using store.dispatch. The state is immediately updated, and we can access the updated state using store.getState(). The output of store.getState() is { count: 1 }, indicating that the state has been successfully updated.

After the store.dispatch call, we have a console.log statement that prints “After dispatch”. This statement will only execute after the state has been updated, confirming that store.dispatch is synchronous.

It is important to note that while store.dispatch itself is synchronous, the reducers that handle the dispatched actions may contain asynchronous logic. For example, if you are using middleware like redux-thunk or redux-saga, the logic inside the middleware functions may be asynchronous. However, the store.dispatch call itself remains synchronous.

In conclusion, store.dispatch in Redux is synchronous. It immediately processes the dispatched action and updates the state before moving on to the next line of code.