React Query

About React Query

Out of the box, React applications do not come with an opinionated way of fetching or updating data from your components so developers end up building their own ways of fetching data. This usually means cobbling together component-based state and effect using React hooks, or using more general purpose state management libraries to store and provide asynchronous data throughout their apps. While most traditional state management libraries are great for working with client state, they are not so great at working with async or server state. This is because server state is totally different. For starters, server state: Is persisted remotely in a location you do not control or own Requires asynchronous APIs for fetching and updating Implies shared ownership and can be changed by other people without your knowledge Can potentially become "out of date" in your applications if you're not careful Once you grasp the nature of server state in your application, even more challenges will arise as you go, for example: Caching... (possibly the hardest thing to do in programming) Deduping multiple requests for the same data into a single request Updating "out of date" data in the background Knowing when data is "out of date" Reflecting updates to data as quickly as possible Performance optimizations like pagination and lazy loading data Managing memory and garbage collection of server state Memoizing query results with structural sharing If you're not overwhelmed by that list, then that must mean that you've probably solved all of your server state problems already and deserve an award. However, if you are like a vast majority of people, you either have yet to tackle all or most of these challenges and we're only scratching the surface! React Query is hands down one of the best libraries for managing server state. It works amazingly well out-of-the-box, with zero-config, and can be customized to your liking as your application grows. React Query allows you to defeat and overcome the tricky challenges and hurdles of server state and control your app data before it starts to control you.