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You Need to Try These 10 NPM Packages as a React Developer

Nitin Ranganath on February 26, 2021

As web developers, we tend to make use of several NPM packages on a daily basis for different reasons, from simple ones like adding colors to the c...

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Graeme Grant • Oct 18 '22

Brilliant article took notes of all your recommendations, thank you

nassimmiled • Feb 26 '21

Why do we use axios when we have fetch?

Nitin Ranganath • Feb 26 '21 • Edited

Mostly because it is simpler to work with. Here's an example considering that I want to fetch from todos from a sample API:

With fetch:

const response = await fetch('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos');
const todos = await response.json();
console.log(todos);

With axios:

const todos = await axios.get('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos')
console.log(todos)

Notice how we didn't have to manually convert the response manually to JSON. It's because axios does that automatically for us. This is just one of the features. So yeah, it saves us some time and lines of code.

Clyde • Mar 14 '21

You used then for one example and async/await for the other. It's better if you want to show a like for like comparison that you stick to the same approach so that you can highlight just the differences between then two. This makes fetch seem more verbose and more difficult to read when most of that is due to await being more concise.

Nitin Ranganath • Mar 14 '21

You're right. Edited the example to use async-await in both cases. Thanks for notifying.

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Kacper Turon • Mar 1 '21

well it's not exactly the same, axios comes with backwards compatibility, and polyfills in old browsers, it will work almost everywhere

Georgey • Mar 5 '21 • Edited

Axios comes in handy if you're a Rest-API fan

ProMikeCoder2020 • Mar 7 '21

As some have already said it clmes with better browser support and syntax, but it's biggest advantage is having extra features likr timeout request and others

Bart • Mar 4 '21

Reselect is already re-exported in Redux Toolkit so there is no need to add this as separate dependency but if you don't use Redux Toolkit which I highly recommend then it's good to use Reselect. Good article :)

Nitin Ranganath • Mar 1 '21

You're very welcome! I hope you find react-google-login worthy. Personally, I've used it everytime I had to implement the Google OAuth button and it works perfectly. You can try out the demo whose link can be found on their NPM page :)

Ash • Feb 26 '21

I've used most of these and agree, 10 amazing and useful packages. Thanks for the write up!

Nitin Ranganath • Feb 26 '21

Thank you for reading! :)

Daniel Viklund • Feb 26 '21

Nice summary, thanks!

Regarding the highlight of formik, have you hade any personal experience with react-hook-forms and if so, how do you think those two packages compare two each other?

Nitin Ranganath • Feb 26 '21

Sorry, I've not used react-hook-form so I can't really compare them myself. However, I did visit their website and it seems pretty awesome. Their landing page has some comparison with Formik and I think you'll be interested in that. Here's a screenshot for your reference: