Implementing conditional behaviour to useAction hook

[merthanmerter]

Some may think server actions are not meant to be fetching client side data but I personally find them useful when combined with middlewares and revalidating data with state hooks instead of search queries etc.

That said, would it be possible to introduce something like "shouldFetch / shouldTrigger" parameter to conditionally trigger the action with useAction hook?

const { execute, result, status } = useAction(action, { executeOnMount: { input, shouldTrigger: !!condition } })

// // React.useEffect(() => {
// // 	if (!condition) return
// // 	execute()
// // }, [condition])

By the way, this works;

const { data, error, isLoading } = useSWR(shouldFetch ? 'action' : null, () => action({}), {})

[TheEdoRan]

Hi, as you said, they're not really meant to fetch data, route handlers should be used for that instead. Though, since executeOnMount functionality is already implemented, I could add something like an executeWhen property to trigger execution.

[ScreamZ]

I'm voting to deprecate executeOnMount. As you said, server actions are not meant to fetch data and should be the result of actions or side effects.

The executeOnMount feature can easily be coded with a useEffect if you wish so.

If you wish to play on client side code like for an SPA, you should rather relies on SWR or tanstack query which is way more optimised for the use case you indicate.

[merthanmerter]

I'm voting to deprecate executeOnMount. As you said, server actions are not meant to fetch data and should be the result of actions or side effects.

The executeOnMount feature can easily be coded with a useEffect if you wish so.

makes more sense tbh 😀

[TheEdoRan]

I'm voting to deprecate executeOnMount.

Yeah, after thinking about it I agree with you @ScreamZ. Actions should not have an executeOnMount functionality. We'll see if this will change with React Server Functions. I'll keep the functionality for now, but deprecate it.

[merthanmerter]

I still think some kind of shouldTrigger functionality would be still useful though. Maybe not for data fetching but it would be a solid way to block the the action to be triggered instead of adding extra return layer.

[TheEdoRan]

@merthanmerter I think it's better to let the user handle that, in my opinion it's not a library job.