History

A history state node is a special kind of state node that, when reached, tells the machine to go to the last state value of that region. There's two types of history states:

• 'shallow', which specifies only the top-level history value, or
• 'deep', which specifies the top-level and all child-level history values.

History State Configuration

The configuration for a history state is the same as an atomic state node, with some extra properties:

• type: 'history' to specify that this is a history state node
• history ('shallow' | 'deep') - whether the history is shallow or deep. Defaults to 'shallow'.
• target (StateValue) - the default target if no history exists. Defaults to the initial state value of the parent node.

Consider the following (contrived) statechart:

const fanMachine = createMachine({
  id: 'fan',
  initial: 'fanOff',
  states: {
    fanOff: {
      on: {
        // transitions to history state
        POWER: { target: 'fanOn.hist' },
        HIGH_POWER: { target: 'fanOn.highPowerHist' }
      }
    },
    fanOn: {
      initial: 'first',
      states: {
        first: {
          on: {
            SWITCH: { target: 'second' }
          }
        },
        second: {
          on: {
            SWITCH: { target: 'third' }
          }
        },
        third: {},

        // shallow history state
        hist: {
          type: 'history',
          history: 'shallow' // optional; default is 'shallow'
        },

        // shallow history state with default
        highPowerHist: {
          type: 'history',
          target: 'third'
        }
      },
      on: {
        POWER: { target: 'fanOff' }
      }
    }
  }
});

In the above machine, the transition from 'fanOff' on the event 'POWER' goes to the 'fanOn.hist' state, which is defined as a shallow history state. This means that the machine should transition to the 'fanOn' state and to whichever the previous substate of 'fanOn' was. By default, 'fanOn' will go to its initial state, 'first', if there is no history state.

const firstState = fanMachine.transition(fanMachine.initialState, {
  type: 'POWER'
});
console.log(firstState.value);
// transitions to the initial state of 'fanOn' since there is no history
// => {
//   fanOn: 'first'
// }

const secondState = fanMachine.transition(firstState, { type: 'SWITCH' });
console.log(secondState.value);
// => {
//   fanOn: 'second'
// }

const thirdState = fanMachine.transition(secondState, { type: 'POWER' });
console.log(thirdState.value);
// => 'fanOff'

console.log(thirdState.history);
// => State {
//   value: { fanOn: 'second' },
//   actions: []
// }

const fourthState = fanMachine.transition(thirdState, { type: 'POWER' });
console.log(fourthState.value);
// transitions to 'fanOn.second' from history
// => {
//   fanOn: 'second'
// }

With a target specified, if no history exists for the state region the history state is defined in, it will go to the target state by default:

const firstState = fanMachine.transition(fanMachine.initialState, {
  type: 'HIGH_POWER'
});
console.log(firstState.value);
// transitions to the target state of 'fanOn.third' since there is no history
// => {
//   fanOn: 'third'
// }

Notes

• History states can be directly accessed from State instances on state.history, but this is seldom necessary.