Intro to Immutable.js

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javascript/immutale.js.md
Jan 11, 2017
JavaScript

Intro to Immutable.js

TIP: When using console.log while debugging Immutable.js objects, you’ll see weird Map structures and it doesn’t help very much in terms of figurring out object structure. For easier debugging, you can perform .toJS() on an Immutable object and console.log that to see the object structure in plain JS.

console.log(myMap) // console shows weird Immutable.js object
console.log(myMap.toJS()) // console shows plain JS object

const Immutable = require('immutable')

// Maps are like JS Objects

var map1 = Immutable.Map({ a: 1, b: 2, c: 3 })

console.info('map1', map1) // map1 Map { "a": 1, "b": 2, "c": 3 }

map1
  .set()
  .get()

// To set values, you always create a new instance of whatever you're editing
var map2 = map1.set('b', 50);
console.info('map2', map2)

Values in Immutable.js data structures can’t be mutated, so with all the setter methods, you can’t just do

map1.set('a': 100)

it’d do nothing, because you can’t directly set (i.e. change) the map. You have to set the value on a new instance.

var map1 = map1.set('a': 100)