What is difference between Axios and Fetch?

Question

I am calling the web service by using fetch but the same I can do with the help of axios. So now I am confused. Should I go for either axios or fetch?

Answer 1

They are HTTP request libraries...

I end up with the same doubt but the table in this post makes me go with isomorphic-fetch. Which is fetch but works with NodeJS.

http://andrewhfarmer.com/ajax-libraries/

Answer 2

Fetch and Axios are very similar in functionality, but for more backwards compatibility Axios seems to work better (fetch doesn't work in IE 11 for example, check this post)

Also, if you work with JSON requests, the following are some differences I stumbled upon with.

Fetch JSON post request

let url = 'https://someurl.com';
let options = {
            method: 'POST',
            mode: 'cors',
            headers: {
                'Accept': 'application/json',
                'Content-Type': 'application/json;charset=UTF-8'
            },
            body: JSON.stringify({
                property_one: value_one,
                property_two: value_two
            })
        };
let response = await fetch(url, options);
let responseOK = response && response.ok;
if (responseOK) {
    let data = await response.json();
    // do something with data
}

Axios JSON post request

let url = 'https://someurl.com';
let options = {
            method: 'POST',
            url: url,
            headers: {
                'Accept': 'application/json',
                'Content-Type': 'application/json;charset=UTF-8'
            },
            data: {
                property_one: value_one,
                property_two: value_two
            }
        };
let response = await axios(options);
let responseOK = response && response.status === 200 && response.statusText === 'OK';
if (responseOK) {
    let data = await response.data;
    // do something with data
}

So:

• Fetch's body = Axios' data
• Fetch's body has to be stringified, Axios' data contains the object
• Fetch has no url in request object, Axios has url in request object
• Fetch request function includes the url as parameter, Axios request function does not include the url as parameter.
• Fetch request is ok when response object contains the ok property, Axios request is ok when status is 200 and statusText is 'OK'
• To get the json object response: in fetch call the json() function on the response object, in Axios get data property of the response object.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

According to mzabriskie on GitHub:

Overall they are very similar. Some benefits of axios:

• Transformers: allow performing transforms on data before a request is made or after a response is received

• Interceptors: allow you to alter the request or response entirely (headers as well). also, perform async operations before a request is made or before Promise settles

• Built-in XSRF protection

please check Browser Support Axios

I think you should use axios.

Answer 4

Axios is a stand-alone 3rd party package that can be easily installed into a React project using NPM.

The other option you mentioned is the fetch function. Unlike Axios, fetch() is built into most modern browsers. With fetch you do not need to install a third party package.

So its up to you, you can go with fetch() and potentially mess up if you don't know what you are doing OR just use Axios which is more straightforward in my opinion.

Answer 5

In addition... I was playing around with various libs in my test and noticed their different handling of 4xx requests. In this case my test returns a json object with a 400 response. This is how 3 popular libs handle the response:

// request-promise-native
const body = request({ url: url, json: true })
const res = await t.throws(body);
console.log(res.error)


// node-fetch
const body = await fetch(url)
console.log(await body.json())


// Axios
const body = axios.get(url)
const res = await t.throws(body);
console.log(res.response.data)

Of interest is that request-promise-native and axios throw on 4xx response while node-fetch doesn't. Also fetch uses a promise for json parsing.

Answer 6

One more major difference between fetch API & axios API

• While using service worker, you have to use fetch API only if you want to intercept the HTTP request
• Ex. While performing caching in PWA using service worker you won't be able to cache if you are using axios API (it works only with fetch API)

Answer 7

Benefits of axios:

• Transformers: allow performing transforms on data before request is made or after response is received
• Interceptors: allow you to alter the request or response entirely (headers as well). also perform async operations before request is made or before Promise settles
• Built-in XSRF protection

Advantages of axios over fetch