svelte-core-bestpractices

$state

Only use the $state rune for variables that should be reactive — in other words, variables that cause an $effect, $derived or template expression to update. Everything else can be a normal variable.

Objects and arrays ($state({...}) or $state([...])) are made deeply reactive, meaning mutation will trigger updates. This has a trade-off: in exchange for fine-grained reactivity, the objects must be proxied, which has performance overhead. In cases where you're dealing with large objects that are only ever reassigned (rather than mutated), use $state.raw instead. This is often the case with API responses, for example.

$derived

To compute something from state, use $derived rather than $effect:

// do this
let square = $derived(num * num);

// don't do this
let square;

$effect(() => {
	square = num * num;
});

[!NOTE] $derived is given an expression, not a function. If you need to use a function (because the expression is complex, for example) use $derived.by.

Deriveds are writable — you can assign to them, just like $state, except that they will re-evaluate when their expression changes.

If the derived expression is an object or array, it will be returned as-is — it is not made deeply reactive. You can, however, use $state inside $derived.by in the rare cases that you need this.

$effect

Effects are an escape hatch and should mostly be avoided. In particular, avoid updating state inside effects.

• If you need to sync state to an external library such as D3, it is often neater to use {@attach ...}
• If you need to run some code in response to user interaction, put the code directly in an event handler or use a function binding as appropriate
• If you need to log values for debugging purposes, use $inspect
• If you need to observe something external to Svelte, use createSubscriber

Never wrap the contents of an effect in if (browser) {...} or similar — effects do not run on the server.