Implementing Axios in React JS for Making Get Requests | Using Axios for API Calls in React JS | Step-by-Step Guide to Calling Get API in React with Axios

Axios is a popular library that allows you to make HTTP requests in JavaScript. It is commonly used in React applications to fetch data from APIs. In this tutorial, we will discuss how to make a GET request using Axios in a React JS application.

1. Installing Axios:
   To use Axios in your React application, you need to first install the Axios package. You can do this by running the following command in your terminal:

npm install axios 

This will add the Axios package to your project’s dependencies.

1. Importing Axios:
   Next, you need to import Axios into your React component where you want to make the API request. You can do this by adding the following line at the top of your component file:

import axios from 'axios';

1. Making a GET request:
   To make a GET request using Axios, you can use the axios.get() method. Here’s an example of how you can make a GET request to an API and log the response to the console:

axios.get('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts')
  .then(response => {
    console.log(response.data);
  })
  .catch(error => {
    console.error(error);
  });

In the code above, we are making a GET request to the JSONPlaceholder API to fetch a list of posts. The axios.get() method returns a Promise, which allows us to use then() and catch() methods to handle the response or any errors that occur.

1. Handling the response:
   Once the API call is successful, you can access the data returned by the API in the response.data property. You can then use this data to update the state of your React component or perform any other necessary actions.

2. Error handling:
   If the API call fails, the catch() method will be executed, and you can handle the error in this block of code. You can log the error message to the console or display an error message to the user.

3. Making API calls in React components:
   You can make axios GET requests in React components by calling the axios.get() method inside a lifecycle method like componentDidMount() or inside a function that is triggered by a user action like a button click.

Here’s an example of how you can make a GET request inside a functional component in React:

import React, { useEffect } from 'react';

const App = () => {
  useEffect(() => {
    axios.get('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts')
      .then(response => {
        console.log(response.data);
      })
      .catch(error => {
        console.error(error);
      });
  }, []);

  return (
    <div>
      {/* Your component JSX */}
    </div>
  );
};

export default App;

In this example, we are making a GET request to the JSONPlaceholder API when the component is first rendered. We are using the useEffect() hook with an empty dependency array to ensure that the API call is only made once when the component is mounted.

1. Conclusion:
   In this tutorial, we discussed how to make a GET request using Axios in a React JS application. We covered how to install Axios, import it into your component, make a GET request, handle the response, and handle errors. Axios is a powerful library that simplifies the process of making HTTP requests in React applications and is widely used in the development of modern web applications.