Stores

Stores is kind of like a database, but for your front-end application. With Redux, creating a store lets you put the global state tree of your application in one place. Stores are tied to the root reducer upon declaration. Therefore, the only way you can change the state within the store, is to go through and dispatch an action, which is filtered through that reducer. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Actions

Actions are kind of like, every possible maneuver we can do with our state, or that our users can do. Literally think of the possible actions with respect to state. Adding a comment, liking a post, or creating a group, are all good examples of actions.

It's important to keep in mind though, actions are not applicable in every instance where you would call setState(). Instead, think of actions in a broader sense, and use them whenever you would let the user take an action to change the global state of your application, a.k.a. the store's state.

Dispatching

This is the Redux term for sending out an action to do it's thing. Therefore, when the user does X, dispatch the action Y, in that sense.

Reducers

Reducers are the the only way in which we can actually dispatch the actions. Whenever we want to make a change within the store (i.e. the application's global state), we must go through a reducer. A reducer will usually be a switch statement, in which the different types of actions are evaluated, before finally returning the state with all of its modifications.

Root Reducer

The kicker with Redux, is that there is only one reducer. This one has a special name, the root reducer. This reducer combines all of the other reducers into one file, which is connected to the store. In doing so, we can access every single reducer option, (and therefore every single action outcome) via one endpoint from our store.