React Query - Beyond the Basics

I'm super excited to be here today, giving my first live talk at an in-person conference. Dominik, the maintainer of React Query, walks through the API design decisions, including success stories, trade-offs, and mistakes. Tener Linsley designed React Query's medium-sized query API to be minimal, intuitive, powerful, and flexible. Major versions in open source require marketing efforts, but not primarily for adding new features. TypeScript is crucial for building projects and managing user demands in open source can be challenging. The addition of the max pages option improved performance and avoided unnecessary refetches. Inversion of control gives users flexibility, but mistakes can happen in API design. Open source requires time management and feedback from users. API design is influenced by typing ease and good TypeScript support. Getting involved in open source involves trial and error and joining community platforms like TanStack Discord. Dominik's journey started during the pandemic and he can be found on Twitter, TanStack Discord, and his blog.

Global state management and the challenges of placing server state in global state are discussed. React Query is introduced as a solution for handling asynchronous server state. The Talk demonstrates the process of extracting logic into custom hooks and fixing issues with state and fetching logic. Optimistic updates with mutation are showcased, along with the benefits of using React Query for data fetching and mutations. The future of global state management is discussed, along with user feedback on React Query. The Talk concludes with an invitation to explore React Query for server state management.

This Talk focuses on effective React state management and lessons learned over the past 10 years. Key points include separating related state, utilizing UseReducer for protecting state and updating multiple pieces of state simultaneously, avoiding unnecessary state syncing with useEffect, using abstractions like React Query or SWR for fetching data, simplifying state management with custom hooks, and leveraging refs and third-party libraries for managing state. Additional resources and services are also provided for further learning and support.

Suspense is a mechanism for orchestrating asynchronous state changes in JavaScript frameworks. It ensures async consistency in UIs and helps avoid trust erosion and inconsistencies. Suspense boundaries are used to hoist data fetching and create consistency zones based on the user interface. They can handle loading states of multiple resources and control state loading in applications. Suspense can be used for transitions, providing a smoother user experience and allowing prioritization of important content.

React Query is a popular library with significant weekly downloads and positive user sentiment. It may have trade-offs like bundle size, but the actual size shipped is smaller. Bundle size optimization can be achieved by exporting only necessary features. React Query's declarative approach eliminates the need for custom data fetching solutions. It offers caching, request duplication, background updates, and more. RackQuery doesn't support normalized caching, but refetching after invalidation works fine. React's vision includes suspense architecture and server components. The documentation could be improved with a more structured flow. TensorStack Query can be a good choice for Next.js apps, but not necessary with mature frameworks. The 10 stack query and router concepts were discussed. Combining React Query with HTTP caching provides a robust caching solution.