react-use-xhr

A simple React hook that communicates via XMLHttpRequest(XHR)

👀 Overview

import {useXhr} from 'react-use-xhr'

const YourComponent = () => {
  const result = useXhr({
    httpMethod: 'GET',
    url: 'https://your-awesome-api.com',
  })
  console.log(result)
  return <YourSubComponents />
}

👇 Example of console.log output.

Object {isLoading: true, events: Array[0]}
Object {isLoading: true, events: Array[1]}
Object {isLoading: true, events: Array[2]}
Object {isLoading: true, events: Array[3]}
Object {isLoading: false, events: Array[4], xhr: XMLHttpRequest}
Object {isLoading: false, events: Array[4], xhr: XMLHttpRequest}

🐱 Features

• Communicates using XMLHttpRequest object.
  • It also returns raw XMLHttpRequest results.
• Works on IE11(Internet Explorer 11).
  • For example, it does not depend on the Promise object.

NOTE: Why use XMLHttpRequest?

• Because of my work, it's difficult to polyfill fetch.
• If you can use fetch, I think there are few reasons to use XHR.

🚀 Installation

npm install react-use-xhr

📖 Usage

useXhr API

Overview

import {useXhr} from 'react-use-xhr'
const result = useXhr(query, queryId, options)

Parameters

• query: An object for building HTTP request.
  • httpMethod: One of "GET", "POST", "PUT", "PATCH" and "DELETE".
  • url: An URL string such as "https://example.com" and "/foo". It is passed as an argument of open.
  • headers (Optional): An object such as {"Content-Type": "application/json"}. Each key/value is passed as an argument of setRequestHeader.
• queryId (Optional): It is used when you want to send a request multiple times with the same query value. It can receive a string, a number or an undefined. If undefined, then query is used for this value.
  • Default value is undefined.
• options (Optional): An object such as {maxResultCache: 100, timeout: 5000}.
  • Default value is {}.
  • maxResultCache (Optional): The number of responses to cache.
    • Default value is 1.
  • timeout (Optional): Milliseconds until the communication is terminated. It is passed as an argument of timeout.
    • Default value is undefined.

Return value

An object that contains the communication status and the response result.

• isLoading: A flag indicating whether communication is in progress.
• events: An array that stores the occured XHR events in order.
• xhr (May not exist): An instance of XMLHttpRequest. This will be passed when the communication is complete. It does not always exist when isLoading is true.

👤 Use Cases

Handle communication failures

XHR tells exceptional results to the outside on the event.
There is a method of judging the result depending on the event that occurred.

const isCommunicationFailed = (events) => {
  return events.some(event => ['abort', 'error', 'timeout'].indexOf(event.type) !== -1)
}
const result = useXhr(query)
if (isCommunicationFailed(result.events)) {
  // Do stuff.
}

Send the same query multiple times

If you specify and change queryId, it will send the request again even if query is the same.

// Resend the request every minute.
const everyOneMunite = Math.floor(new Date().getTime() / (1000 * 60))
const result = useXhr(query, everyOneMunite)

Cache many request results

useXhr first searches the cache for a result with the same queryId.
Since the initial value is 1, only the most recent result is saved, but increasing this value will save many results.

const result = useXhr(query, undefined, {maxResultCache: 9999})