ReactJS API and AJAX Explained in Simple Terms

Working with a web app is not easy. You should have data to be rendered which is consumed either from a remote endpoint or local mock data.

There is no in-built package for calling the React API. Why? Because React is a library, unlike Angular, which is a complete model view controller framework.

Calls to APIs are made from a remote endpoint when you have to access external resources. This is done with the help of React AJAX to configure the request and respond to the resources. There’s a limitation to this. You cannot access the remote endpoint. For this, you will need third-party libraries - Axios or an in-built one like Fetch. Third-party libraries consume the server data.

The best practice is to make an API call in componentDidMount() life cycle method and not anywhere.An example of how to use an API in ReactJS.

It is well-known that React is a JavaScript-based library that does not have any feature to make HTTP requests, therefore, we need to use third-party libraries for this purpose.

Several third-party libraries are available to make HTTP calls into React apps. Here, we have listed some of them.

• Axios

• Fetch

• Superagent

• React-axios

• Use-http

• React-request

There might be more such libraries. You can choose any of them.

What is AXIOS & How to use it with React JS?