Image by analogicus from Pixabay
Zeit has released a React hook, useSWR, which has a tag-line, "React Hooks for Remote Data Fetching".
SWR
stands for, well, check out the site to see what it means (š).
It does what it claims to do, and do it well and easily.
"Well"
useSWR
boasts following features.
- Lightweight
- Backend agnostic
- Realtime
- JAMstack oriented
- Suspense
- TypeScript ready
- REST compatible
- Remote + Local
"Easy"
Suspense
Yes. It works with the experimental channel of React's Suspense.
All you need is to set the suspense: true
as one of the options in the API.
const { data } = useSWR(
"https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts",
url =>
fetch(url)
.then(_ => _.json())
.then(sleep),
{ suspense: true }
);
Fetching data.
Home page shows the following basic example.
import useSWR from '@zeit/swr'
function Profile () {
1ļøā£ š
const { data, error } = useSWR('/api/user', fetch)
if (error) return <div>failed to load</div>
if (!data) return <div>loading...</div>
return <div>hello {data.name}!</div>
}
In this example, the React Hook useSWR accepts a
key
and afetch
function. key is a unique identifier of the data, normally the URL of the API. Then key will be passed to fetch, which returns the data asynchronously.
I was kind of lost with 1ļøā£ fetch
as I was expecting to pass fetch
and expected useSWR
to auto convert the response to a json string as axios does but it doesn't.
So using the pattern in the basic example, you might want to pass your own method, which fetches data, and transforms it into a json (refer to getRandomDog
method below).
const getRandomDog = url => fetch(url).then(_ => _.json());
// https://swr.now.sh/#basic-data-loading
function BasicDataLoading() {
const { error, data } = useSWR(
`https://dog.ceo/api/breeds/image/random`,
getRandomDog
);
return (
<>
{error && <p>Error! {error}</p>}
{data && data.status === "success" && (
<img src={data.message} alt={data.message} />
)}
</>
);
}
I found it to work like a function, which accepts the key
('/api/user'
in the basic example) and "you" as a caller decide how to return a value. Be it an async method, or synchronous method, it didn't matter when I tried.
const getCachedText = async text => text;
const options = {
revalidateOnFocus: false,
shouldRetryOnError: false
};
function CachedHeader() {
const { data: cachedText } = useSWR("Cached Header", getCachedText, options);
return <h1>{cachedText}</h1>;
}
function Identity({ value }) {
const { data } = useSWR(value, () => value, options);
return <>{data}</>;
}
Sandbox
I've created a sandbox to play around & learn the library.
Fork it and play around :)
Note: It uses an experimental version of React (it can break anytime)
Parting Words
This post is created within an hour just to log & share the excitement š
Check out the project page, https://swr.now.sh/ to learn more and learn more on the GitHub repo, https://github.com/zeit/swr.
Top comments (12)
Thanks sharing Sung. Gonna take a look at this when I get a chance. Between this and restful-react, all kinds of great stuff out there right now.
contiamo / restful-react
A consistent, declarative way of interacting with RESTful backends, featuring code-generation from Swagger and OpenAPI specs š„
restful-react
Building React apps that interact with a RESTful API presents a set of questions, challenges and potential gotchas. This project aims to remove such pitfalls, and provide a pleasant developer experience when crafting such applications. It can be considered a thin wrapper around the fetch API in the form of React components and hooks.
As an abstraction, this tool allows for greater consistency and maintainability of dynamic codebases.
Overview
At its core,
restful-react
exposes a hook, calleduseGet
. This component retrieves data, either on mountā¦You're welcome, Nick and thanks for sharing
restful-react
.There are many good libraries out there still yet undiscovered and we don't know about :)
You Go Sung! š„
Thanks Rohan. Glad to see ya on DEV :)
I'm a total React noob, but I would normally do this with useEffect. Is the main benefit the support for suspense?
Ah, I think I see after playing with your example. It's nice to have it remote/local friendly out of the box. Thanks!
As I am also a noob at
useSWR
, I just tried to explain as much as I know :pYes. One would normally use
useEffect
by default to fetch data (as it's a side effect).useSWR
would ease the burden of having to write much boilterplate code.useSWR
is usinguseLayoutEffect
overuseEffect
(, which I'd like to know the reason behind it).github.com/zeit/swr/blob/a323fa702...
thinking out loudly:
Maybe this article by Dave Ceddia would provide an answer.
When to useLayoutEffect Instead of useEffect
It's only one of the nice features :)
The main benefit is hidden in the name, SWR
Basically not showing "loading" screen as soon as a data is being fetched/refetched.
That sounds a bit like Pending ā Skeleton ā Complete Concurrent UI pattern in the experimental channel (but not sure if they are the same).
You can also do optimisitic UI update using mutate, meaning, you can show updated state right away before getting remote data. And revert if the change was not made.
This is AWESOME!!!!!!!!!
Thanks, Roel~
useAsync, useAsyncRetry and useAsyncFn is better!
Change my mind!
No, I won't change your mind š
On the other hand, as this post touched good parts of
useSWR
, I will share a nice/thorough concerns (by SĆ©bastien Lorber) one should watch out for.SĆ©bastien is an author of github.com/slorber/react-async-hook, which is in works to be merged with React-Async.
reddit.com/r/reactjs/comments/dof4...
I 'd like to ask how to useSRW get request from graphql service.