Advanced Data Fetching Technique in React for Senior Engineers

As an engineer working with React, it’s important to have a solid understanding of the various ways to fetch and manage data in your application. The way you choose to fetch and manage data can greatly impact the performance, scalability, and overall user experience of your application. In this article, we will explore several popular techniques for fetching and managing data in React, including the built-in fetch function, using a library like axios, and the latest and powerful library React Query.

The built-in fetch function is the simplest approach to fetch data. It is a web standard for making network requests and is supported by most modern browsers. The fetch function returns a promise that resolves with a Response object, which can be used to access the response data. However, it doesn't provide an elegant way to handle errors or cancel requests. Additionally, it doesn't have built-in support for caching, which can be a crucial feature for many applications.

fetch('https://example.com/data')
  .then(res => res.json())
  .then(data => console.log(data))
  .catch(err => console.log(err))

Using a library like axios provides more control over network requests. It provides a more powerful and flexible way to handle errors, timeouts, and other network-related issues. Additionally, axios has built-in support for interceptors, which allows you to easily add cross-cutting concerns like authentication, logging, or error handling to your requests.

import axios from 'axios'

axios.get('https://example.com/data')
  .then(res => console.log(res.data))
  .catch(err => console.log(err))

While these approaches are solid solutions, they still have some limitations. For example, caching and pagination are not handled by default, and you have to implement them yourself which can be time-consuming and error-prone. This is where React Query comes in.

React Query is a powerful and modern library that provides a more optimized way of fetching and managing data in React. It provides a way to handle caching, pagination, and real-time updates out of the box. React Query also provides a way to handle errors and loading states in a consistent way. It also allows you to easily share and reuse data across your…