Handling Multiple API Calls in React Applications

React is a powerful JavaScript library primarily focused on building user interfaces. However, it doesn't directly handle requests to external APIs, which is purely a networking concern. To manage multiple API calls efficiently in a React application, developers have a variety of tools and libraries at their disposal. This article explores different approaches to handling API calls while keeping your application state-managed and efficient.

React's Role in API Calls

React is designed to manage the UI and presentation layer of your application. While it can be extended with hooks such as useState and useEffect, these are primarily focused on managing application state and side effects, respectively. For handling network requests such as fetching data from APIs, React relies on external libraries and frameworks to bridge this gap.

Making API Calls in React

Without a meta-framework or additional tools, making API calls in a React application can be as simple as using vanilla JavaScript and the fetch API. For instance:

scriptfetch('')  .then(response  response.json())  .then(data  console.log(data))  .catch(error  ('Error:', error));/script

However, managing multiple API calls and ensuring your application stays state-managed can become a complex task when done manually. This is where libraries and frameworks come into play to simplify and optimize the process.

Using React-Query for API Management

React-Query is a popular library that provides a simple way to manage stale, refetch, and cache data fetching for React applications. React-Query allows you to define a query and automatically handle the fetching, caching, and revalidation of data using a single syntax:

Query key"data" queryFn{()  fetch('')}  {data  console.log(data)}/Query

React-Query features intuitive hook-based access to its functionality, making it easy to use within your existing React components. It also provides extensive hooks like useQuery, useMutation, and more to manage state and side effects efficiently.

Integrating UseSWR for Safer Data Fetching

UseSWR is another popular library for handling API calls in React applications. UseSWR simplifies data fetching and caching by providing a hook called useSWR.

scriptimport { useSWR } from 'swr';useSWR('', (url)  fetch(url).then(res  res.json()));/script

UseSWR is known for its robust safety features. It retries failed requests, manages expired data, and optimizes performance. UseSWR is particularly useful for scenarios where you expect APIs to return stale or outdated data, requiring automatic refetching.

NextJS and Custom Strategies

NextJS, a popular meta-framework, extends React with built-in support for server-side rendering, static sites, and API routes. NextJS can handle API calls in a more structured manner, especially when combined with custom server-side logic or remote API calls. If you have a large React application, NextJS provides additional features like automatic data fetching, optimized repeated requests, and data hydration.

Conclusion

While React itself doesn't handle API calls directly, developers have several tools and libraries at their disposal to efficiently manage network requests. Whether you prefer the simplicity of vanilla JavaScript with fetch, the convenience and powerful features of React-Query or UseSWR, or the comprehensive features of NextJS, there are multiple ways to handle multiple API calls in a React application. Each tool offers a unique set of benefits, and the choice depends on the specific needs of your project.

References:

1. React-Query:

2. UseSWR:

3. NextJS: