Using Gatsby + Redux While Preserving Site Performance

In the blog post, Grayson Hicks discusses optimizing website performance when using Gatsby in conjunction with Redux, a global state management library. While Gatsby excels at code-splitting to improve performance, integrating Redux can inadvertently lead to larger JavaScript bundles, slowing down the site. Hicks explores common patterns for incorporating Redux into Gatsby projects, explaining that wrapping the root element with Redux's Provider can result in all related JavaScript being loaded across every page, regardless of necessity. To mitigate this, he introduces two strategies: location-based and interaction-based reducers. The location-based approach confines Redux's Provider to specific pages, ensuring only necessary code is bundled for those pages, while the interaction-based approach dynamically loads reducers upon user interactions, preventing unnecessary code from loading initially. These strategies help maintain Redux's benefits without sacrificing Gatsby's performance optimizations, offering developers ways to manage state effectively while keeping JavaScript bundles lean and efficient.