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The NodeJS 18 Fetch API

Andrew Baisden on May 24, 2022

NodeJS 18 introduced some new cool features and one of the most useful ones is the built in Fetch API. What this means is that we longer need to us...

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Alex Lohr • May 25 '22

For libraries, I found a rather nice pattern to allow users to only install node-fetch if they need it:

// package.json
{
  "peerDependencies": {
    "node-fetch": "*"
  },
  "peerDependenciesMeta": {
    "node-fetch": {
      "optional": true
    }
  }
}

// Run before you use fetch:
if (!globalThis.fetch) {
  Object.assign(globalThis, {
    fetch: (...args: any[]) => {
      try {
        const fetch = require("node-fetch");
        Object.assign(globalThis, { fetch });
        return fetch(...args);
      } catch (e) {
        console.warn(
          '"\x1b[33m⚠️ package missing to run fetch on the server.\n Please run:\x1b[0m\n\nnpm i node-fetch\n"'
        );
        Object.assign(globalThis, { fetch: () => Promise.reject() });
        return Promise.reject();
      }
    }
  });
}

This way, users get a helpful message if they forget to install node-fetch and you can avoid superfluous dependencies.

SUCHINTAN DAS • May 24 '22

Thanks Andrew 👨, for sharing this information.

Can't wait to try it out on the system 👍.

One suggestion 💭. Can you explain the changes that are being introduced on the new version of fetch api compared to the previous version ✍.

I think it would make the blog a full packed information about the topic and would also increase the understanding of people who can't have time to look on the documentation to know about the information ℹ.