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The Optimistic UI Race Condition That Only Showed Up on the Fifth Click
TL;DR: An optimistic UI can look correct while the server state diverges, especially under rapid user actions. The fix is to per-item throttle requests so only one in-flight update per item is processed.
The author used an optimistic UI on a task list and trusted the instant visual feedback. Five rapid clicks triggered five concurrent requests that toggled the same boolean in the database, while the UI stayed misleadingly correct. Nothing crashed or logged an error, but the UI desynchronized from server state. The remedy is to track in-flight requests per item and disable that item while awaiting a response, ensuring only one request per item at a time. A commenter highlighted that disabling should apply to the specific input, not globally.
Question for the room: Have you implemented per-item in-flight request guards for optimistic updates in your apps, and what challenges did you face?
— via dev.to
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