State Management

State Management

Modeling and managing application state explicitly.

Context

You are designing state management. Make state transitions explicit and predictable.

Domain Context

• FSM: Finite state machine; explicit states and transitions
• Event Sourcing: Store events not state; replay to reconstruct
• CQRS: Separate read and write models; optimize independently
• Immutable State: State updates create new state objects

Instructions

1. Define States: What states can your system be in? Be exhaustive
2. Define Transitions: What events trigger which transitions?
3. Model Constraints: What transitions are invalid? Encode in state machine
4. Event Sourcing: If you need audit trail, store events not state
5. Separate Reads: If read/write patterns differ, separate models
6. Test Transitions: Verify state machines work correctly

Anti-Patterns

• Implicit state machine; state hidden in booleans ("isLoading", "hasError")
• No validation of transitions; invalid state becomes possible
• Mixing state and commands; separate concerns
• Event sourcing without strong typing; easy to replay wrong events
• CQRS when simple state suffices; adds complexity

Further Reading

• Harel Statecharts (original, powerful FSM extension)
• Domain-Driven Design (Evans), Chapter on Aggregates
• CQRS Pattern (Microsoft docs)