SWR - A Better Way to Fetch Data

SWR is a React Hooks library for data fetching. It allows you to use React Hooks to fetch data from an API, cache the data, and re-use the data when the component renders. SWR first returns the data from cache (stale), then returns the fetched data (revalidated), and finally comes with a focus on simplicity, flexibility, and performance.

How to use SWR?

To use SWR, you need to add the following line of code to your project:

import useSWR from 'swr'

function Profile() {
  const { data, error } = useSWR('/api/user', fetcher)
  if (error) return <div>failed to load</div>
  if (!data) return <div>loading...</div>
  return <div>hello {data.name}!</div>
}

The above example uses the useSWR Hook to fetch data from the "/api/user" endpoint. The fetch function is used to make the HTTP request. If the request fails, the component will render a "failed to load" message. The component will render a "loading..." message if the data is not yet loaded. Otherwise, the component will render the data.

What are the benefits of using SWR?

There are a few benefits of using SWR:

You can use React Hooks to fetch data, which makes your code simpler and cleaner.
The data is cached, so if you make a request multiple times, the data will be fetched from the cache faster.
You can re-use the data when the component renders, which is useful if you want to make a server-side rendered React application.
SWR focuses on simplicity, flexibility, and performance.

What are some drawbacks of using SWR?

There are a few drawbacks of using SWR:

The documentation is not as comprehensive as in other libraries.
To use SWR effectively, you need to have a basic understanding of React Hooks.
There is a learning curve to using SWR, but once you understand how it works, it's not difficult to use.

Conclusion

Overall, SWR is a great library for fetching data in React applications. It's simple to use, and it has a focus on performance. If you're looking for an alternative to other data fetching libraries, or if you want to use React Hooks to fetch data, then SWR is worth considering.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out to me on my Twitter handle @iamatifriaz

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