React is a popular and widely-used JavaScript library for building user interfaces, enabling developers to create dynamic and interactive web applications efficiently.

React Hooks, introduced in React 16.8, revolutionized how developers manage stateful logic in functional components. Hooks allow developers to use state and other React features without writing a class, making it easier to organize and reuse logic across components.

In this article, we will learn about a new react hook named use, yup that's the name of the hook. This hook is still in experimental stage, If you would like to test it out, make sure your react and react-dom package version is set to "experimental".

About use Hook

The use Hook was revealed back in 2022 by the React team in an RFC (Request For Comments). It was a solution designed to simplify the process of data fetching by reducing the amount of boilerplate code needed to define Promises.

It can be used like await. Unlike other Hooks, use Hook has a special trait where it can be called inside conditions, blocks, and loops. This makes it a flexible Hook when you want to add logic and conditional flow without adding more components.

Ultimately, this hook reduces boiler plate code making code more readable and easy to understand.

Example

This example will show how to use use hook to reduce the boiler plate code and handle data fetching easily

How we fetch data without use hook

import { useEffect, useState } from "react";

const App = () => {
    const [product, setProduct] = useState({});

    useEffect(() => {
        fetch("https://xyz.com/products")
            .then((res) => res.json())
            .then((json) => setProduct(json));
    }, []);

    if (!product) return <div>Loading...</div>;

    return <div>{product.name}</div>;
};

export default App;

Using use hook

import { use } from "react";

const getProduct = fetch("https://xyz.com/products").then((res) => res.json());

const App = () => {
    // use hook expects promise as argument
    const product = use(getProduct);

    if (!product) return <div>Loading...</div>;

    return <div>{product.name}</div>;
};

export default App;

The use hook eliminated the use of useEffect and useState, making the code simpler.

Conclusion

In the end, React team and community are pushing hard to come up with better solutions for fetching and server components, which means that soon we will have a way simpler solution to control fetch data natively with server components support. Happy coding 👨‍💻