no-auto-forward.md

Forbid auto-forwarding events

Prefer sending events explicitly to child actors/services.

Rule Details

Avoid blindly forwarding all events to invoked services or spawned actors - it may lead to unexpected behavior or infinite loops. The official documentation suggests sending events explicitly with the forwardTo or send action creators.

XState v5 removed the autoForward option. This rule will report errors if autoForward is used with XState v5.

Examples of incorrect code for this rule:

// ❌ auto-forwarding events to an invoked service
createMachine({
  states: {
    playing: {
      invoke: {
        src: 'game',
        autoForward: true,
      },
    },
  },
})

// ❌ auto-forwarding events to a spawned actor
createMachine({
  states: {
    initializing: {
      entry: assign({
        gameRef: () => spawn(game, { autoForward: true }),
      }),
    },
  },
})

Examples of correct code for this rule (XState v4 only):

// ✅ no auto-forward
createMachine{{
  states: {
    playing: {
      invoke: {
        src: 'game',
      },
    },
  },
}}

// ✅ autoForward set to false
createMachine({
  states: {
    initializing: {
      entry: assign({
        gameRef: () => spawn(game, { autoForward: false }),
      }),
    },
  },
})