Using Data Fetching Libraries with Server-Side Rendering in React

When building web applications with React, it's common to fetch data from an API and render it on the client-side. However, when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) and improving page load times, server-side rendering (SSR) can be a better option. In this article, we will discuss how to use data fetching libraries with server-side rendering in React.

What is Server-Side Rendering?

Server-side rendering (SSR) is the process of rendering web pages on the server and sending the fully rendered HTML to the client. With SSR, the client receives a fully rendered page and can display it to the user without waiting for the JavaScript to load and execute. This can improve page load times, provide better SEO, and improve the user experience.

Why use Data Fetching Libraries with Server-Side Rendering?

When building an SSR React application, we need to fetch data on the server and send it to the client for rendering. While we could use built-in Node.js methods to fetch data, data fetching libraries can simplify the process and provide additional features like caching, retries, and error handling.

Using a data fetching library also helps maintain consistency between client-side and server-side rendering. This is important because if the data is different between the client and server, it can lead to rendering errors and negatively impact the user experience.

Popular Data Fetching Libraries

There are several data fetching libraries available for React, including:

• Axios: A popular HTTP client that can be used in both client-side and server-side environments.
• Fetch: A built-in browser API for fetching data.
• SWR: A React Hooks library for data fetching with features like caching and revalidation.
• React Query: A popular library for data fetching with features like caching, polling, and optimistic updates.

In this article, we will focus on using Axios with server-side rendering in React.

Using Axios with Server-Side Rendering

Axios is a popular HTTP client that can be used in both client-side and server-side environments. To use Axios with SSR in React, we need to install it and import it into our server-side code.

Installing Axios

To install Axios, we can run the following command:

npm install axios

Importing Axios in Server-Side Code

To use Axios in our server-side code, we need to import it and make a request to our API endpoint. Here's an example of how to do this:

import axios from 'axios';

export async function getServerSideProps() {
  const response = await axios.get('https://api.example.com/data');

  return {
    props: {
      data: response.data,
    },
  };
}

function MyComponent({ data }) {
  // render component with data
}

In this example, we're using the getServerSideProps function provided by Next.js. This function is called at build time and server time, and its return value is passed to the component as props. We're making a request to our API endpoint using Axios and passing the response data to the component as props.

Using Axios with React Hooks

We can also use Axios with React Hooks to fetch data on the client-side. Here's an example of how to do this:

import axios from 'axios';
import { useEffect, useState } from 'react';

function MyComponent() {
  const [data, setData] = useState([]);

  useEffect(() => {
    async function fetchData() {
      const response = await axios.get('https://api.example.com/data');
      setData(response.data);
    }

    fetchData();
  }, []);

  // render component with data
}

In this example, we're using the useEffect hook to fetch data when the component mounts. We're making a request to our API endpoint using Axios and updating the component state with the response data.

Conclusion

In this article, we discussed the benefits of using data fetching libraries with server-side rendering in React. We also went over how to use Axios with server-side rendering and React Hooks.

Using data fetching libraries can simplify the process of fetching data and provide additional features like caching and error handling. Using server-side rendering can improve page load times and provide better SEO. By combining these two techniques, we can create fast and SEO-friendly web applications with React.

Remember to always choose the data fetching library that suits your specific use case and project requirements. With these tools at our disposal, we can create performant and scalable web applications with ease.