tRPC and React Query: Enhancing API Interactions in React Apps

Combining tRPC with React Query provides a powerful, type-safe approach to handling API requests in React applications, seamlessly integrating the type safety of tRPC with the efficiency of React Query. This guide explores how to leverage tRPC and React Query for optimized data fetching and state management.

Overview of tRPC and React Query

What is tRPC?

tRPC is a framework for building type-safe APIs in TypeScript applications. It allows developers to create APIs with minimal boilerplate, ensuring that the types defined on the server are automatically inferred in the client. This results in a more reliable and maintainable codebase.

Why Use React Query with tRPC?

React Query is a library for fetching, caching, and updating data in React applications. When used with tRPC, it provides a streamlined way to manage server state, cache data, and handle data synchronization, enhancing the overall efficiency and performance of your application.

Setting up your project

Installing dependencies

To get started, ensure you have tRPC and React Query installed in your project:

npm install @trpc/client react-query

Configuring tRPC client

Create a tRPC client instance to interact with your tRPC server:

import { createTRPCClient } from '@trpc/client';

const trpcClient = createTRPCClient({
  url: '<http://localhost:3000/trpc>',
});

Integrating React Query

Creating custom hooks

Custom hooks simplify data fetching and mutation operations. Define hooks for each tRPC query or mutation:

import { useQuery } from 'react-query';

export function useTRPCQuery(queryKey, queryFn, options) {
  return useQuery(queryKey, () => trpcClient.query(queryFn), options);
}

Fetching data with queries

Utilize the custom hooks in your components to fetch data:

import React from 'react';
import { useTRPCQuery } from './hooks';

const MyComponent = () => {
  const { data, isLoading } = useTRPCQuery('uniqueKey', 'getSomeData');

  if (isLoading) return <div>Loading...</div>;
  return <div>{data}</div>;
};

Handling mutations

Creating a mutation hook

Similarly, create a hook for mutations:

import { useMutation } from 'react-query';

export function useTRPCMutation(mutationFn) {
  return useMutation((newData) => trpcClient.mutate(mutationFn, newData));
}

Using mutations in components

Implement the mutation hook in your components to update data:

import React from 'react';
import { useTRPCMutation } from './hooks';

const UpdateComponent = () => {
  const mutation = useTRPCMutation('updateData');

  const handleSubmit = (data) => {
    mutation.mutate(data);
  };

  return <form onSubmit={handleSubmit}>...</form>;
};

Advanced usage

Optimistic updates

React Query supports optimistic updates, allowing the UI to update immediately before the mutation is confirmed by the server. This can be configured in the mutation options.

Query invalidation

To keep data fresh, you can invalidate queries after a mutation, triggering a refetch of related data.

Prefetching data

Prefetching data for anticipated requests can improve user experience by loading data before it's needed.