React Query and Auth: Who is Responsible for What?

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React Query manages server state on the client, and auth manages user sign in/sign up/sign out. Where do these two overlap, and how do you separate concerns? This talk proposes a data flow with custom hooks for both auth and React Query to manage authentication status and user profile updates.

This talk has been presented at React Advanced 2021, check out the latest edition of this React Conference.

FAQ

The main focus of the talk is to discuss the overlap between React, Query, and Auth, and to explain who is responsible for what.

You can find Bonnie Shulkin's contact information on her website bonnie.dev and on Twitter at bonnie.dev (with the dot spelled out). She also holds the handle @Bonnie on GitHub.

React Query is a library that maintains server state on the client by caching server data. It ensures data synchronization with the server using hooks like useQuery and useMutation.

The useQuery hook in React Query is used to fetch data from the server and keep it synchronized with the client. It updates the data based on certain triggers like network reconnects or page focus.

The useAuth hook in the day spa app manages sign-in, sign-up, and sign-out functions. It uses JSON Web Token authentication to handle user data.

React Query is beneficial for user data management because it handles data updates, ensures accurate data synchronization, and manages app startup by updating data from the server.

Some npm libraries mentioned are React Query Auth and React Query Firebase. React Query Auth is a lightweight wrapper around React Query, while React Query Firebase uses Firebase functions for authentication and data management.

A mutation in React Query is used to update data on the server. The useMutation hook is used for this purpose, allowing the application to manage changes in server data.

The speaker of the talk is Bonnie Shulkin, a developer and trainer with around 20 years of experience in the software industry.

The useUser hook centralizes user data management by synchronizing data between the internal user state, the React Query cache, and local storage. It ensures data consistency across sessions and updates.

Bonnie Schulkin
Bonnie Schulkin
19 min
25 Oct, 2021

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Video Summary and Transcription
This talk introduces React Query and Auth, discussing how React Query maintains server state on the client and handles mutations and data updates. The day spa app example demonstrates the use of React Query to fetch data and handle user authentication. React Query is also useful for managing user data and ensuring accurate data from the server. The talk highlights the importance of addressing the three main players in user data: React Query, Auth Functions, and persistence across sessions.

1. Introduction to React, Query, and Auth

Short description:

Hi, thanks for coming to this talk on React, Query, and Auth. I'd like to introduce myself and give a few notes. The approach here is to handle all the players interested in user information and off. At the end, I will talk about a couple of npm libraries you can use. You can find the slides on my bany.dev site slash talks.

Hi, thanks for coming to this talk on React, Query, and Auth. So React, Query, and Auth overlap somewhat, and this talk is going to discuss who's responsible for what. So first I'd like to introduce myself with this amazing steampunk avatar that React Advanced made for me. It's my new favorite thing. My name is Bonnie Shulkin, and I've been in the software industry around 20 years. I've held a lot of roles, but currently I am a developer and trainer. You can find me at bonnie.dev, which is in the lower right of all of these slides. Twitter, I'm at bonnie.dev with the dot spelled out, and I am incredibly proud to hold the at Bonnie handle on GitHub. To introduce this talk, I want to just give a few notes. The first one is that here I'm going to talk about concepts and I'm not really going to introduce code. If you're interested in the code, I'll have a link to the code example at the end. The approach here is actually making my own system to handle all of the players that are interested in user information and off. And this way we can understand all the pieces. But at the end, I will talk about a couple of npm libraries you can use. And then finally, if you're somebody who likes to click links from talks or if you like to follow along with the slides you can get these slides in my bany.dev site slash talks and you can just look for the React advanced talk. I have made some puns in some of the images that you can look out for if you like that kind of thing.

2. Introduction to React Query

Short description:

I'll introduce React query and the app for this talk. React query is a library that maintains server state on the client by caching server data. It has tools like the use query hook for fetching data and use mutation hook for updating data on the server. Dependent queries can be turned on or off based on an expression's value.

So here's a table for the table of contents. First, I'm going to be introducing React query for people who don't know about this amazing library. Then I'll talk about the app for this talk and what kind of authentication assumptions it uses.

I'll talk about the solution I have to merge React query and auth. And then I'll talk about those NPM libraries I mentioned.

So let's start by talking about React query. React query is a library whose job it is to maintain server state on the client. So it uses this by making a cache of server data on the client. One of the main tools from React query is the use query hook. And this hook takes a query function that's responsible for actually getting the data from the server. In order to subscribe to that data, the React code runs the use query hook. Now part of React queries job is to make sure that the data is in sync with the server. So use query actually updates the data from the server. It pulls new data from the server depending on some triggers. Some of them are automatic like a network reconnect or if the page is focused. You can also manually invalidate the data in the cache and the reason I'm bringing that up is because we'll talk about that later in this talk.

When you manually invalidate the data in the cache, then use query goes to the server and fetches fresh data. I have some small print here. It's a simplification. React query is a pretty sophisticated app so I'm not talking about a lot of concepts like stale data and expiring the cache and so forth. There are a couple other React query concepts that I'd like to talk about that are relevant to this talk. One is mutations. So use query is if you simply want to fetch data from the server. Mutations are if you want to update data on the server and so React query has a use mutation hook in addition to a use query hook. There's also a concept of dependent queries. So these are queries that you can turn on or off based on the value of an expression. So if the expression evaluates to truthy, then the query will be on and it will do all of those data refetches as it does in order to keep the data fresh. If it's off if that value is falsy, then the data is off and is not going to be communicating with the server. I should say the query is off, I think I said the data is off.

Now I'd like to talk about the app that I wrote this solution for.

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