Prevent react component from rendering twice when using redux with componentWillMount

One thing you might do is create a higher order component that handles the basic pattern of loading a different component (or no component) before the required props are loaded.

export const LoaderWrapper = function(hasLoaded, Component, LoaderComponent, onLoad) {
    return props => {
        if (hasLoaded(props)) {
            return <Component {...props} />
        }
        else {
            if (onLoad) onLoad(props)

            return { LoaderComponent ? <LoaderComponent /> : null }
        }
    }
}

Then you can wrap your component before connecting it to get the desired behaviour.

export default connect(state => ({item: state.item}))(LoaderWrapper(
    ((props) => !!props.item),
    Editor,
    null,
    (props) => props.dispatch(editItem(props.params.id))
))

You might want to add some currying magic to make sure you can compose these kinds of wrapper functions more nicely. Take a look at recompose for more info.