Client-side data fetching is an essential part of the web app at Wealthfront. 

Traditionally, we fetched data from the Wealthfront API globally: we’d load all the data necessary for the entire page and store it in global state for components on the page to pull from. Crucially, the bulk of this data fetching logic was performed with Redux, outside any React component. This approach worked great in the era of class components, since it would have been difficult to reuse any data-fetching logic that was performed in a component itself – think of the clunkiness associated with higher-order components (HOCs) and render-props. That being said, this approach had several disadvantages: working with Redux was boilerplate-heavy, our load-time was as fast as our slowest endpoint, and we encountered intermittent issues with stale data. We were looking for a better way to fetch data at Wealthfront, and React hooks gave us that opportunity.

React version 16.8 introduced hooks, and sharing logic between components became a breeze. Custom hooks took the place of HOCs and render-props, and we saw the opportunity to address some of the disadvantages of global data fetching. Instead of managing fetch calls outside React with Redux, we began to fetch from within the React tree itself. With primitives like useState and useEffect, we created a simple custom hook that could be used to fetch whatever data a given component required from the Wealthfront API. Fittingly, we called the custom hook useApi. useApi greatly simplified our data fetching patterns, but had many disadvantages of its own: duplicate network requests, additional null checking in components, and more loading and error states for the developer to handle. 

To address these issues, we decided to take a step back and re-examine our data fetching patterns as part of a larger infrastructure initiative. It had been some time since we last reviewed data fetching solutions in the React community, and we were interested in new developments. We were looking for a hybrid approach between global and local data fetching, and React Query turned out to be a great option. 

We’ve since adopted React Query into the Wealthfront code base, iterated on the library with a number of Wealthfront-specific wrappers, created helper utilities to simplify loading and error states, and migrated nearly every call to the Wealthfront API to our new tools. Let’s walk through the process!

Fetching Globally and Fetching Locally

But first, some background on global and local data fetching.

Global data fetching loads all relevant data from the server at the root of the component tree and renders a single loading state while pending. Similarly, if any data fails to load, it triggers a single error state. The data is recorded in a global store, and child components of the root simply pull from this store to access the data they require. Global data fetching presents an interesting set of pros and cons:

Pros:

• The developer only needs to handle a single loading and error state.
• The developer can assume the fetched data is already loaded in deeply-nested children and avoid null checks – assuming the parent component prevents the children from rendering if a network request fails. 

Cons:

• The content on the page is effectively locked behind a loading state until the slowest endpoint is loaded.
• A single fetching failure will trigger an error state for the entire page, even sections which don’t use any data from that particular remote source. 
• Global data fetching requires a global store to hold the data: at Wealthfront we use Redux, and setting up Redux actions and selectors for each new remote source can be tedious. 
• Populating the global store once on-load can lead to stale data if a child component pulls the data after some delay.
• In large apps, it can be difficult to conceptually connect globally fetched data to the child component that uses it. Similarly, it can be difficult to determine if a remote data call can be safely removed when a feature that uses the data is deleted.

To address these disadvantages, we began to use local data fetching. As mentioned earlier, there’s a similar set of tradeoffs:

Pros:

• By fetching data in the component where it’s used, each component only waits for its own data to load before it can render its content. 
• A fetching failure only triggers an error state for the component that requires data from that particular remote source.
• A simpler mental model for the developer, since the data fetching is in the same component as the data rendering. Similarly, when removing a feature, it’s easy to remove any associated data fetching.
• Data is fetched when it’s needed, preventing stale data.

Cons:

• Each component needs to handle its own loading and error state.
• Because loading and error states are handled locally, null checks are necessary locally as well.

There’s also another category of problems with local data fetching: request duplication. There’s no simple way to deduplicate requests coming from multiple components loading data from the same remote source simultaneously.

When looking to improve our data fetching patterns, we sought to embrace the pros and address the cons of each data fetching paradigm as much as possible.

In other words, we were looking for a solution which would:

1. Support both global and local data fetching
2. When fetching locally, deduplicate simultaneous requests
3. When fetching locally, minimize null checks and simplify loading and error states
4. When fetching globally, avoid boilerplate associated with a global store
5. When fetching globally, revalidate data when it’s pulled from the global store by a child component

We wanted the benefits of local data fetching when fetching data globally, and the benefits of global data fetching when fetching data locally. React Query gave us the best of both worlds.

Introducing React Query

Note: The code snippets below that use React Query are based on version 4.0

React Query (also called Tanstack Query) is a modern data fetching library which provides a great set of primitives for managing data from a remote source on the client. The core of React Query is a global store called a query client that’s managed behind-the-scenes. 

With React Query, you pass an asynchronous function, in our case a call to the Wealthfront API, and any data that’s returned from the function is automatically stored in the query client. If another component uses React Query to load the same data, it will pull the cached response from the query client and prevent a loading state. However, in the background React Query will revalidate the data (i.e. load the remote data again). If the data is changed by the revalidation, React Query will re-render the component with the latest updates. This caching strategy is known as stale-while-revalidate, and it’s a great approach to prevent unnecessary loading states while ensuring the user sees up-to-date data.

Out of the box, React Query will also deduplicate simultaneous requests to the same data source, retry failed fetching calls, revalidate data on tab-focus and more.

Building on useQuery for local data fetching

useQuery is the most basic utility for fetching data with React Query. It has a simple interface, and can be used like the following:

By default, useQuery expects two required fields passed to its object parameter: queryFn and queryKey. queryFn is the asynchronous function we call to return our data, and queryKey is an array that’s used to uniquely identify the data returned from the queryFn. In exchange for these inputs, useQuery will return isLoading and isError flags, the data returned from the queryFn, and many other values. 

For local data fetching, useQuery provides everything we need! We can render local loading and error states based on the isLoading and isError flags, and process the fetched data as we’d like. 

However, there’s a bit of additional work we can do to simplify useQuery invocations. At Wealthfront, we use an in-house SDK to interact with our API instead of calling fetch directly, something like the following:

To integrate React Query with our API, we created a wrapper around useQuery called useApiQuery. useApiQuery accepts an API endpoint’s name, the parameters it expects, and all of useQuery’s options: 

As a result, useApiQuery is much simpler to use than useQuery:

With this implementation, useApiQuery improves the ergonomics of calling useQuery, but at the cost of strong type safety: queryData is correctly typed as the return type of api.getUser, but apiQueryData is typed as unknown!

 We can add stronger type safety with a few generics:

With this implementation, the data return field from useApiQuery is strongly typed based on the endpointName and params parameters. 

Iterating on useApiQuery for global data fetching

Since React Query stores its data in the query client – effectively a global store – it’s also a great fit for global data fetching. We can simply call useApiQuery in the root component and handle our single loading and error state there as well. In a child component, we can also call useApiQuery, but this invocation will pull cached data from the query client. In the background, React Query will revalidate the endpoint, ensuring it’s up-to-date. 

One advantage of global data fetching discussed earlier is the ability to prevent null checks in child components which pull data from the global store. However, the semantics for pulling cached data from the query client are identical to those of fetching data in the root: calling useApiQuery. How can we differentiate these two situations for the developer, so they know when to assume the data is populated, and when to handle a loading and error state?

We decided to address the issue by adding a new option to useApiQuery: prefetched. When the developer passes prefetched as true, it serves as an indication to others that the data has already been fetched in a parent component, and that the child can access the data without handling a loading or error state. 

The prefetched flag can also indicate to Typescript that the return type from useApiQuery should be non-nullable. With a few more generics, we can type the data return field accordingly when prefetched is passed as true:

This works great to communicate to other developers that a useApiQuery invocation doesn’t need to handle its own loading or error states – a parent has already taken care of that. There’s just one more nuance to consider: the cacheTime option. 

A child component that invokes useApiQuery with the prefetched option expects that the data it uses is always populated in the query client. This generally works great, since a useApiQuery hook with prefetched should be in a component which, by definition, has a parent that fetches the same data. However, with a default cacheTime of 5 minutes, there’s a danger that the cache will be cleared after a period of inactivity. With an empty cache, a component with prefetched will have no data to pull. Since the component also explicitly doesn’t handle a loading state, it’ll presumably throw an error when a property on the data is accessed. Thankfully, the solution is simple: set the cacheTime option to Infinity, and avoid clearing the cache during periods of inactivity.

After iterating on useQuery , we wrote similar abstractions for useMutation, useQueries, and other common utilities from React Query. Next, we moved on to simplify our patterns to render loading and error states.

Simplifying Loading and Error States

As a reminder, our wish-list for a data fetching library was the following:

1. Support both global and local data fetching
2. When fetching locally, deduplicate simultaneous requests
3. When fetching locally, minimize null checks and simplify loading and error states
4. When fetching globally, avoid boilerplate associated with a global store
5. When fetching globally, revalidate data when it’s pulled from the global store by a child component

React Query handles all of these either out-of-the-box or with some minor adjustments – with one exception: #3, minimize null checks and simplify loading and error states. This makes sense, since React Query handles fetching, not rendering. We decided to tackle this problem ourselves, using the isLoading and isError flags that React Query provides easy access to. After a few iterations, the solution we came up with was AsyncStatus.

AsyncStatus automatically renders a loading state when loading, an error state when errored, and calls the ​​children function otherwise. Calling children as a function is an important nuance: if children is a function that’s only called when the data is successfully fetched, the developer can assume the data is non-null inside the children function! This significantly reduces null checks in components:

The actual implementation of AsyncStatus includes several other features omitted here for brevity: a minimum loading state duration, and opacity/height animations between the loading state and the rendered content.

AsyncStatus works great, but it requires a bit of boilerplate. We decided to experiment with a more high-level component that combines AsyncStatus and useApiQuery: FetchApiQuery.

FetchApiQuery accepts the same parameters as useApiQuery and AsyncStatus, but behind the scenes it’ll automatically call useApiQuery and pass along any relevant props to AsyncStatus. Finally, FetchApiQuery will call its children prop with the return value of useApiQuery, giving the developer easy access to the fetched data.

Looking to the future: React Suspense

Although still experimental, React Suspense promises to address many of the same issues as AsyncStatus. For example, our AsyncStatus demo from above:

Could be converted to the following with React Suspense:

Suspense handles the loading state, ErrorBoundary handles the error state, and by suspending any rendering while fetching, no null checks are necessary!

When React Suspense is properly stable, we’ll investigate making the transition.

Conclusion

Data fetching solutions have come a long way since we first adopted client-side data fetching at Wealthfront. 

By integrating React Query into our data fetching patterns, we’ve improved the developer experience significantly. We introduced standardized utilities for fetching globally and locally and added reusable components to handle loading and error states – all with strict type safety in mind. The user experience has improved as well. Users see fewer loading states with React Query’s caching and are always presented with the most up-to-date version of their data thanks to behind-the-scenes data revalidation. It’s a great win for the Web Platform, our developers, and our users alike.

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