Access the context variable from a inner state's action

[nguyenlam185]

I am now working on a nested state machine that looks like this

const parentMachine = createMachine({
    id: 'parent',
    initial: 'active',
    context: {
        count: 0
    },
    states: {
        active: {
            entry: () => {
                assign({
                    count: 10
                });
            },
            after: {
                '1000': [{
                    target: 'inactive'
                }]
            }
        },
        inactive: {
            entry: () => { 
            },
            on : {
           // Some events go here
            },
            initial: 'inner',
            states: {
                inner: {
                    on: {
                        INCREMENT: {
                            actions: [
                                // Accessing the parent context from an action in the inner state
                                (context, event) => {
                                    console.log('Parent count:', context.count);
                                }
                            ]
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
});

My assumption is that the console.log('Parent count:', context.count); would print out 10 but I got 0.
So what is the proper way to access to the context in this case? I am using xstate 5.18.2

[nguyenlam185]

I have made some progress on this project and I think my the question should be changed to How to assign/reset the context to a specific value on entry. Because it seems that the context value does not change on the entry event.
If I update the context on a event, the inner state's action will print out the right value. Only the updating on entry does not work.
Please anybody help out of this case

[nguyenlam185]

I have found that the same issue happened back in 2020.

[crishoj]

As I understand, context is shared.

From the looks of it, the issue could be that assign is not being returned from the scope:

    states: {
        active: {
            entry: () => { // 👈 The curly braces here result in nothing being returned by this closure
                assign({
                    count: 10
                });
            },
            after: {
                '1000': [{
                    target: 'inactive'
                }]
            }
        },

Perhaps the version below would work?

    states: {
        active: {
            entry: assign({
                count: 10
            }),
            after: {
                '1000': [{
                    target: 'inactive'
                }]
            }
        },

[nguyenlam185]

thank you @crishoj, you are a genius

[crishoj]

you're welcome!