4.0 Roadmap

[fzaninotto]

We're starting to think about the next major milestone for react-admin. It'll mostly be a cleanup release, removing all the deprecated features and the compatibility layers we put in place. It should also be the occasion to use the latest major version of our dependencies.

Breaking Changes

• ✅ Upgrade material-ui to v5 (#6650)
• ✅ Remove redux-saga and saga-based side effects (#6684)
• ✅ Remove declarative side effects support in dataProvider (#6687)
• ✅ Remove connected-react-router (#6704)
• ✅ Remove support for undoable prop now that we have mutationMode (#6711)
• ✅ Replace react-final-form with formik or react-hook-form (#7087)
• ✅ Upgrade react-router to V6 (#6873)
• ✅ Remove permissions injection in main route controllers (#6921)
• ✅ Switch WithPermissions wrapping to a useAuthenticated hook in main controllers (based on a boolean so that users can create an anonymous show view with <Show authenticated={false}>) (#6921)
• ✅ Replace Redux-based query cache by react-query and initial data from query cache
  • ✅ useGetOne (#6779)
  • ✅ useGetList (#6916)
  • ✅useGetMany (#7006)
  • ✅useGetManyReference (#7016)
  • ✅useCreate (#7025)
  • ✅ useUpdate (#6891)
  • ✅useDelete (#7035)
  • ✅useUpdateMany (#7020)
  • ✅useDeleteMany (#7035)
  • ✅ Cleanup data reducers (#7001)
• ✅ Use MUI autocomplete instead of our own (#6924, #6971)
• ✅ Remove Resource initialization, Store Resource definitions in Context rather than in store (#7051)
• ✅ Remove deprecated sort prop in <DataGridHeaderCell> (#7065)
• ✅ Rename currentSort to sort (#7076)
• ✅ Change the Record TypeScript name (which already exists in TypeScript) (#7078)
• ✅ Put Notification component in the AdminUI to avoid gotchas when overriding the layout, and remove notifications from Redux store (#7082)
• ✅ Remove basePath (#7100)
• ✅ Allow to pass custom params to each dataProvider hooks (#7116)
• ✅ Add support for partial pagination (i.e. no total) (#7120)
• ✅ Remove TestContext (AdminContext does the trick) and ra-test (#7148)
• ✅ Add ChoicesContextProvider in all ReferenceInputs to avoid child cloning with choices and allow choices filtering, pagination, and sorting (#7185)
• ✅ Replace RichTextInput with TipTap version (#7153)
• ✅ Remove prop injection and child cloning, use context instead (#7060, #7218, #7215, #7214, #7207, #7206, #7205, #7203)
• ✅ Avoid cloning inputs to pass variant and margin, and document theme override instead (#7223)
• ✅ Remove HOCs (like addField) and render props
• ✅ Make the signatures of useGetList, useGetMatching, useGetMany and useGetManyReference consistent (some return a RecordMap, some return an array of records)
• ✅ Upgrade dependencies to their latest major versions
• ✅ Remove useGetMatching (use getList instead) (#6916)
• ✅ Add support for sx props in all ra-ui-materialui components
• ✅ Store user preferences outside of Redux (and make them persistent) (#7158)
• ✅ Backport Preferences features from ra-enterprise
• ✅ Remove Redux (#7177)
• ✅ Review UI and alignments
• ✅ Profile and optimize
• ✅ check FIXMEs in code
• ✅ Review all examples to make sure the code is canonical
• ✅ React 18 compatibility (#7377)

These items didn't make it into the release:

• Automate integration of authProvider and dataProvider for credentials Not crucial
• Change GraphQL Data Provider approach to avoid relying on runtime introspection (#6639) Will be done in a minor release
• Update BooleanInput signature (#4273)
• Use MUI Datagrid instead of our own Maybe in a future version
• Write codemods to facilitate the upgrade

We won't break BC for another year or two after 4.0, so we'd better wait to incorporate the new major releases of our dependencies. This causes the following releases to be blockers:

• Selectors for react useContext (https://github.com/reactjs/rfcs/pull/119)

Timeline

Work on v4 started in September 2021, and is expected to end in early 2022.

Note: Please don't post comments with feature requests that don't need a breaking change here. React-admin releases new features on a monthly basis, and doesn't need a major release for that. This discussion is only for backwards-incompatible changes.

[fzaninotto]

We're doing our best to stabilize the API in January, so the first beta should be published in February

[fzaninotto]

I've removed cursor-based pagination from the roadmap, as I think this can bve added without breaking BC (cf #1510).

But we must support partial pagination, i.e. cases where computing the total is too expensive, and the response to getList doesn't contain it.

[meastp]

@fzaninotto The changes/bc-additions you propose (for pagination) would be sufficient, I think. Thanks :)

[Romej]

Will there be a path to upgrade from 2.9 to 4.0 or is it necessary to upgrade to 3.0 first ?

[fzaninotto]

@Romej We haven't planned to write an upgrade guide from 2 to 4. If you want one, I suggest you get in touch with Marmelab to buy some Professional Services.

[CezaryTarnowski-TomTom]

Hi, with the migration to 4.0 I've noticed that my app contains multiple nested views on entities that are dependent on other entities. A simple example would be groups and users that are parts of those groups, to attach a user to a group we're using route: /#/groups/:groupId/users/create for the list of users in the group we have: /#/groups/:groupId/users which we have defined as custom routes, it is working but it makes the groupUser resource handling substandard. I've started thinking that maybe it would be good to have an ability to nest tags so that on the react-admin level some entities can be considered as dependent on others. I'm wondering if you foresee such a use case, if this is something that you would like to be a part of v4 I could try to prepare a PR.

[fzaninotto]

@CezaryTarnowski-TomTom interesting use case, for which react-admin wasn't originally designed. But it should become more straightforward if you wrap your users page with a ResourceContextProvider.

As for your PR, could you elaborate on what you have in mind ?

[CezaryTarnowski-TomTom]

I would think about an ability to nest a users resource within groups:

<Resource name="groups">
   <Resource name="groupUsers" />
</Resource>

which would make the routes like: #/groups/:groupId/groupUsers/ - for list #/groups/:groupId/groupUsers/:id - for edit etc... that would also somehow set the groupId in the context of a groupUsers resource. I'm planning to deliver such a feature and I believe that it could be easier to create that within the library itself, I could also use some of your expertise.

[fzaninotto]

@CezaryTarnowski-TomTom nice idea. I don't think this requires a breaking change, so it's something we can add later. Your PR will be welcome!

[WesleyKapow]

Would love to be able to modify a resource's routes as I'd like /resource/:id to point to show and /resource/:id/edit to point to edit. I believe this aligns with many conventions like seen in rails. From a user perspective, they could copy and paste id's into the URL and that should go to the show page!

From the doc:

The routing will map the component as follows:

/posts/ maps to PostList /posts/create maps to PostCreate /posts/:id maps to PostEdit /posts/:id/show maps to PostShow

[TCM5]

*offtopic alert . Just for curiosity, have you guys considered using zero-installs philosophy?

[fzaninotto]

*offtopic alert . Just for curiosity, have you guys considered using zero-installs philosophy?

I don't know what it is, can you please elaborate?

[cuong-nguyen]

Thank you all contributors and @fzaninotto on this v4. We're using v3 for one internal project and we're starting new one in few weeks. Is v4 beta production ready? or should I stick with v3 for now? If v4 is not ready, any specific timeline as to when it will be? Thanks 🙏

[djhi]

No it's not ready yet. We plan to release a beta very soon though

[fzaninotto]

I've removed this item from the list:

• Change dataProvider.getList signature to accept operators in filters (filters?: Array<{ field, operator, value}>) (#7235)

The rationale for not doing it in v4 is explained in the linked PR.

[fzaninotto]

I've removed this item from the list:

• Inject components instead of elements (#3246)

We're not ready for that and the tradeoff isn't clear - some might say that the trend goes the other way around.

[fzaninotto]

I've removed this item from the list:

• Manage open/closed menu state in Menu rather than Sidebar (https://github.com/marmelab/react-admin/pull/5575)

After a few tests, I can't implement it. The mui Drawer component requires a fixed width for its main content.

So we'll fall back to the theme (with a custom theme property) that developers can tweak to adjust the menu width. Unforty-unately, this will require a bit of documentation.

[fzaninotto]

Great news: we've published the first beta release for v4: https://github.com/marmelab/react-admin/releases/tag/v4.0.0-beta.1.0

Please test and report bugs, and regressions as new GitHub issues!

[fzaninotto]

I'll speak about the changes and new features of react-admin v4 in about a week from now, during a 30 minutes online event. It's free, so feel free to join if you're curious about the future major release of react-admin!

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/preview-of-react-admin-v4-tickets-274058445187

[giorgiPapava]

Hey, thanks for this awesome tool for community. I'm wondering when v4 will be production ready and available on NPM. I will be starting new project in around 1 month and I don't think it would be good idea to start with v3. What would be needed to migrate from v3 to v4? Will there be migration guide?

[djhi]

Hi,

We released several beta already. As for the upgrade guide, it's here and the documentation is here

[giorgiPapava]

@djhi Thanks 🥰 Is is planned when you will be releasing production ready version? Also is it safe to start implementing beta version? Will there be breaking changes from beta to production?

[fzaninotto]

We've announced a public release of react-admin v4 in April. As for the beta, we're following semver, so there should not be any more breaking changes since the stable release.

[TCM5]

Ohhh, I missed the V4 preview event at preview-of-react-admin-v4.

Can this be published on youtube or something else?

[fzaninotto]

We didn't record the presentation. But we'll soon publish a blog post with essentially the same content.

[DVGY]

@fzaninotto I saw just now that, your team will also remove redux. In our app, we are using custom reducers and our own state in the whole app to manage some data.

Can you pls answer these 2 questions taking into consideration the redux thing?

1. How hard will it be to upgrade our app to react admin v 4.0.0?
2. What are the things that we may need to change?

[fzaninotto]

@DVGY We've written an extensive Upgrade guide, it contains all the anwsers you need.

https://github.com/marmelab/react-admin/blob/next/UPGRADE.md#redux-is-gone

[fzaninotto]

We've published react-admin v4 today!

https://github.com/marmelab/react-admin/releases/tag/v4.0.0