[tanduv]

I never really liked the syntax of fetch and the need to await for the response.json, implementing additional error handling -

  async function fetchDataWithAxios() {
    try {
      const response = await axios.get('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1');
      console.log('Axios Data:', response.data);
    } catch (error) {
      console.error('Axios Error:', error);
    }
  }



  async function fetchDataWithFetch() {
    try {
      const response = await fetch('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1');

      if (!response.ok) { // Check if the HTTP status is in the 200-299 range
        throw new Error(`HTTP error! status: ${response.status}`);
      }

      const data = await response.json(); // Parse the JSON response
      console.log('Fetch Data:', data);
    } catch (error) {
      console.error('Fetch Error:', error);
    }
  }

[Cthulhu_]

While true, in practice you'd only write this code once as a utility function; compare two extra bits of code in your own utility function vs loading 36 kB worth of JS.

[farkin88]

Yeah, that's the classic bundle size vs DX trade-off. Fetch definitely requires more boilerplate. The manual response.ok check and double await is annoying. For Lambda where I'm optimizing for cold starts, I'll deal with it, but for regular app dev where bundle size matters less, axios's cleaner API probably wins for me.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Agreed, but I think that in every project I've done I've put at least a minimal wrapper function around axios or fetch - so adding a teeny bit more to make fetch nicer feels like tomayto-tomahto to me.

[jedwards1211]

You’re shooting yourself in the foot if you put naked fetch calls all over the place in your own client SDK though. Or at least going to extra trouble for no benefit

[Tokumei-no-hito]

why don't they just set those as options

{ throwNotOk, parseJson }

they know that's 99% of fetch calls, i do t see why it can't be baked in.

[freeopinion]

I somehow don't get your point.

The following seems cleaner than either of your examples. But I'm sure I've missed the point.

  fetch(url).then(r=>r.ok ? r.json() : Promise.reject(r.status))
  .then(
    j=>console.log('Fetch Data:', j),
    e=>console.log('Fetch Error:', e)
  );

I share this at the risk of embarrassing myself in the hope of being educated.

[Cthulhu_]

Depends on your definition of clean, I consider this to be "clever" code, which is harder to read at a glance.

You'd probably put the code that runs the request in a utility function, so the call site would be `await myFetchFunction(params)`, as simple as it gets. Since it's hidden, there's no need for the implementation of myFetchFunction to be super clever or compact; prefer readability and don't be afraid of code length.

[fmorel]

Except you might want different error handling for different error codes. For example, our validation errors return a JSON object as well but with 422.

So treating "get a response" and "get data from a response" separately works out well for us.

[stevage]

I usually write it like:

    const data = (await fetch(url)).then(r => r.json())

But it's very easy obviously to wrap the syntax into whatever ergonomics you like.

[porridgeraisin]

You don't need all those parens:

  await fetch(url).then(r => r.json())

[mythz]

why not?

    const data = await (await fetch(url)).json()

[mcv]

That's very concise. Still, the double await remains weird. Why is that necessary?

[sethaurus]

The first `await` is waiting for the response-headers to arrive, so you know the status code and can decide what to do next. The second `await` is waiting for the full body to arrive (and get parsed as JSON).

It's designed that way to support doing things other than buffering the whole body; you might choose to stream it, close the connection early etc. But it comes at the cost of awkward double-awaiting for the common case (always load the whole body and then decide what happens next).

[jech]

So you can say:

    let r = await fetch(...);
    if(!r.ok) ...
    let len = response.headers.get("Content-Length");
    if(!len || new Number(len) > 1000 * 1000)
        throw new Error("Eek!");

[tracker1]

It isn't, the following works fine...

    var data = await fetch(url).then(r => r.json());

Understanding Promises/A (thenables) and async/await can sometimes be difficult or confusing, especially when mixing the two like above.

[mcv]

Same thing. Maybe this doesn't make the double promise quite as visible, but it's still a double promise. You could probably replace the other await with a .then() too.

[moritzruth]

IMU because you don't necessarily want the response body. The first promise resolves after the headers are received, the .json() promise resolves only after the full body is received (and JSON.parse'd, but that's sync anyway).

[Cthulhu_]

Honestly it feels like yak shaving at this point; few people would write low-level code like this very often. If you connect with one API, chances are all responses are JSON so you'd have a utility function for all requests to that API.

Code doesn't need to be concise, it needs to be clear. Especially back-end code where code size isn't as important as on the web. It's still somewhat important if you run things on a serverless platform, but it's more important then to manage your dependencies than your own LOC count.