EDIT I used the wrong term in the title and question. I did not mean a global variable, but to instead declare timeoutID inside of the showNotification function.

I'm on my first week of testing Redux. I'm wondering if there is a more elegant / less hacky solution to using a glodal variable for the timeoutID? clearTimeout is used to guarantee that the last added notification is always shown for the full desired time, even if it would be added before the previous notification was set to "empty".

actionCreator.js

import { addQuote } from "./addQuote"
import { showNotification } from "./showNotification"

export const actionCreator = (quote, time) => {
  return dispatch => {
    dispatch(addQuote(quote))
    dispatch(showNotification(quote, time))
  }
}

showNotification.js

let timeoutID = null

export const showNotification = (newQuote, time) => {

  const message = `A new quote by ${newQuote.author} was added.`
  return dispatch => {
    dispatch({ type: 'SHOW_NOTIFICATION', data: message })

    clearTimeout(timeoutID)
    
    timeoutID = setTimeout(() => {
      dispatch({ type: 'SHOW_NOTIFICATION', data: '' })
    }, time * 1000)
    
  }
}

notificationReducer.js

const initState = {
  notification: ''
}

const notificationReducer = (state=initState, action) => {
  switch (action.type) {
    case 'SHOW_NOTIFICATION':

    const message = action.data
      return {
        ...state,
        notification: message
      }

    default:
      return {
        ...state
      }
  }
}

export default notificationReducer