Managing Global State in Livewire

Developers of Laravel can use Livewire to create dynamic, real-time interfaces without leaving the comfort of the framework. When you begin using Livewire, you'll face challenges associated with state management. One of them is managing global state in Livewire.

Essentially, global state refers to data that is shared across multiple Livewire components. Sounds simple, right? But improper handling can make your application more difficult to maintain and troubleshoot. We'll walk through some best practices for managing Livewire's global state in this article.

Global State in Livewire: Why Is It Tricky?

Suppose you have a multi-step form spread across several Livewire components. Each component handles a different part of the form, but all require access to some shared data, such as the user ID or the current step. It's possible to pass this data around using events and listeners, but that can become messy very quickly. Here's where global state comes in.

The Solution: A Livewire Service Class

Here's a quick example of how a dedicated service class can be used to manage global state.

/ app/Services/LivewireGlobalState.php
namespace App\Services;

class LivewireGlobalState
{
    public $userId;
    public $currentStep;

    public function __construct($userId, $currentStep)
    {
        $this->userId = $userId;
        $this->currentStep = $currentStep;
    }

    public function moveToNextStep()
    {
        $this->currentStep++;
    }
}

You can then inject this service class into your Livewire components like this:

use App\Services\LivewireGlobalState;

class StepOne extends Component
{
    public $globalState;

    public function __construct(LivewireGlobalState $globalState)
    {
        $this->globalState = $globalState;
    }

    public function render()
    {
        return view('livewire.step-one', [
            'userId' => $this->globalState->userId,
            'currentStep' => $this->globalState->currentStep,
        ]);
    }
}

Dispatching Events to Update State

Another option is to use Livewire's event system to broadcast changes, which all listening components can then respond to.

In one component:

$this->dispatch('updateStep', newStep: $newStep);

In another component:

#[On('updateStep')]
public function handleNewStep($newStep)
{
    $this->currentStep = $newStep;
}

Managing global state in a Livewire application can be tricky, but it offers new features that make it easier. It is possible to create a clean, maintainable way to manage shared data across components using the streamlined event system and dedicated service classes.

And with that, you're all set to manage global state like a pro in your Livewire 3 application.