Vue.js REST API Consumption with Axios ← Alligator.io

Quite a few frameworks have built-in HTTP APIs. Angular 2 has the http module, JQuery has $.ajax, and, up until Vue 2.0, Vue.js had vue-resource. In Vue 2.0, the developers decided that having a built-in http client module was rather redundant, and could be better serviced by third-party libraries. The alternative most frequently recommended is Axios.

Axios is a great http client library. It uses promises by default and runs on both the client and the server (which makes it appropriate for fetching data during server-side rendering). It’s also quite easy to use with Vue. Because it uses promises, you can combine it with async/await to get an amazingly concise and easy-to-use API, as I will demonstrate here.

Installation

Axios should be installed from NPM or Yarn:

# Yarn
$ yarn add axios

# NPM
$ npm install axios --save

Populating Data with a GET Request

While it’s generally poor practice, you can use Axios directly in your components to fetch data from a method, lifecycle hook, or whenever.

ExampleComponent.vue

<template>
  <ul v-if="posts && posts.length">
    <li v-for="post of posts">
      <p><strong>{{post.title}}</strong></p>
      <p>{{post.body}}</p>
    </li>
  </ul>

  <ul v-if="errors && errors.length">
    <li v-for="error of errors">
      {{error.message}}
    </li>
  </ul>
</template>

<script>
import axios from 'axios';

export default {
  data() {
    return {
      posts: [],
      errors: []
    }
  },

  // Fetches posts when the component is created.
  created() {
    axios.get(`http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts`)
    .then(response => {
      // JSON responses are automatically parsed.
      this.posts = response.data
    })
    .catch(e => {
      this.errors.push(e)
    })

    // async / await version (created() becomes async created())
    //
    // try {
    //   const response = await axios.get(`http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts`)
    //   this.posts = response.data
    // } catch (e) {
    //   this.errors.push(e)
    // }
  }
}
</script>

Pushing Data with a POST Request

One can send POST, PUT, PATCH, and DELETE requests just as easily.

(Note, it’s a terrible idea to send requests on every input event, at the very least do some throttling or debouncing.)

ExampleComponent.vue

<template>
  <input type="text" v-model="postBody" @change="postPost()"/>
  <ul v-if="errors && errors.length">
    <li v-for="error of errors">
      {{error.message}}
    </li>
  </ul>
</template>

<script>
import axios from 'axios';

export default {
  data() {
    return {
      postBody: '',
      errors: []
    }
  },

  // Pushes posts to the server when called.
  postPost() {
    axios.post(`http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts`, {
      body: this.postBody
    })
    .then(response => {})
    .catch(e => {
      this.errors.push(e)
    })

    // async / await version (postPost() becomes async postPost())
    //
    // try {
    //   await axios.post(`http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts`, {
    //     body: this.postBody
    //   })
    // } catch (e) {
    //   this.errors.push(e)
    // }
  }
}
</script>

A Common Base Instance

A frequently overlooked but very useful capability Axios provides is the ability to create a base instance that allows you to share a common base URL and configuration across all calls to the instance. This comes in handy if all of your calls are to a particular server, or need to share headers, such as an authorization header.

http-common.js

import axios from 'axios';

export const HTTP = axios.create({
  baseURL: `http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/`,
  headers: {
    Authorization: 'Bearer {token}'
  }
})

You could now use HTTP like so,

<script>
import {HTTP} from './http-common';

export default {
  data() {
    return {
      posts: [],
      errors: []
    }
  },

  created() {
    HTTP.get(`posts`)
    .then(response => {
      this.posts = response.data
    })
    .catch(e => {
      this.errors.push(e)
    })
  }
}
</script>

Reference

That’s just scratching the surface of what Axios can do. See the GitHub repository for more information and documentation.