Answer by cnexans for How to dispatch a Redux action with a timeout?

I understand that this question is a bit old but I'm going to introduce another solution using redux-observable aka. Epic.

Quoting the official documentation:

What is redux-observable?

RxJS 5-based middleware for Redux. Compose and cancel async actions to create side effects and more.

An Epic is the core primitive of redux-observable.

It is a function which takes a stream of actions and returns a stream of actions. Actions in, actions out.

In more or less words, you can create a function that receives actions through a Stream and then return a new stream of actions (using common side effects such as timeouts, delays, intervals, and requests).

Let me post the code and then explain a bit more about it

store.js

import {createStore, applyMiddleware} from 'redux'
import {createEpicMiddleware} from 'redux-observable'
import {Observable} from 'rxjs'
const NEW_NOTIFICATION = 'NEW_NOTIFICATION'
const QUIT_NOTIFICATION = 'QUIT_NOTIFICATION'
const NOTIFICATION_TIMEOUT = 2000

const initialState = ''
const rootReducer = (state = initialState, action) => {
  const {type, message} = action
  console.log(type)
  switch(type) {
    case NEW_NOTIFICATION:
      return message
    break
    case QUIT_NOTIFICATION:
      return initialState
    break
  }

  return state
}

const rootEpic = (action$) => {
  const incoming = action$.ofType(NEW_NOTIFICATION)
  const outgoing = incoming.switchMap((action) => {
    return Observable.of(quitNotification())
      .delay(NOTIFICATION_TIMEOUT)
      //.takeUntil(action$.ofType(NEW_NOTIFICATION))
  });

  return outgoing;
}

export function newNotification(message) {
  return ({type: NEW_NOTIFICATION, message})
}
export function quitNotification(message) {
  return ({type: QUIT_NOTIFICATION, message});
}

export const configureStore = () => createStore(
  rootReducer,
  applyMiddleware(createEpicMiddleware(rootEpic))
)

index.js

import React from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';
import App from './App';
import {configureStore} from './store.js'
import {Provider} from 'react-redux'

const store = configureStore()

ReactDOM.render(
  <Provider store={store}>
    <App />
  </Provider>,
  document.getElementById('root')
);

App.js

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import {connect} from 'react-redux'
import {newNotification} from './store.js'

class App extends Component {

  render() {
    return (
      <div className="App">
        {this.props.notificationExistance ? (<p>{this.props.notificationMessage}</p>) : ''}
        <button onClick={this.props.onNotificationRequest}>Click!</button>
      </div>
    );
  }
}

const mapStateToProps = (state) => {
  return {
    notificationExistance : state.length > 0,
    notificationMessage : state
  }
}

const mapDispatchToProps = (dispatch) => {
  return {
    onNotificationRequest: () => dispatch(newNotification(new Date().toDateString()))
  }
}

export default connect(mapStateToProps, mapDispatchToProps)(App)

The key code to solve this problem is as easy as pie as you can see, the only thing that appears different from the other answers is the function rootEpic.

Point 1. As with sagas, you have to combine the epics in order to get a top level function that receives a stream of actions and returns a stream of actions, so you can use it with the middleware factory createEpicMiddleware. In our case we only need one so we only have our rootEpic so we don't have to combine anything but it's a good to know fact.

Point 2. Our rootEpic which takes care about the side effects logic only takes about 5 lines of code which is awesome! Including the fact that is pretty much declarative!

Point 3. Line by line rootEpic explanation (in comments)

const rootEpic = (action$) => {
  // sets the incoming constant as a stream 
  // of actions with  type NEW_NOTIFICATION
  const incoming = action$.ofType(NEW_NOTIFICATION)
  // Merges the "incoming" stream with the stream resulting for each call
  // This functionality is similar to flatMap (or Promise.all in some way)
  // It creates a new stream with the values of incoming and 
  // the resulting values of the stream generated by the function passed
  // but it stops the merge when incoming gets a new value SO!,
  // in result: no quitNotification action is set in the resulting stream
  // in case there is a new alert
  const outgoing = incoming.switchMap((action) => {
    // creates of observable with the value passed 
    // (a stream with only one node)
    return Observable.of(quitNotification())
      // it waits before sending the nodes 
      // from the Observable.of(...) statement
      .delay(NOTIFICATION_TIMEOUT)
  });
  // we return the resulting stream
  return outgoing;
}

I hope it helps!