Fetch vs. Axios

[devtobi]

At the moment, we are using standard JS fetch-api for requests. Should we maybe change fetch for axios. What would be the benefits of switching?

[langehm]

If apply some ten-stack style functions around the request itself we do not need any more library.

[devtobi]

As far as I found axios has the following benefits compared to fetch-API:

• Automatic JSON (de)serialization leads to a more concise usage
• More unified error handling (fetch only handles 404 as error and thus not all problems can be catched via 'catch' mechanism)
• Axios allows simple abortion of long running requests (or combined requests) compared to complicated AbortController in fetch
• Axios supports timeout functionality, whereas fetch needs to manually use AbortController for this)
• Axios allows configuration of a global configuration object. This would allow us to centralize and reuse the current FetchUtils functionality
• Axios has much better support for form data and multipart uploads

Cons are of course:

• Additional dependency (but very frequently updated)
• No more easy full control over the networking code (however this can also be a benefit)

Additional ideas:

• Combined with the axios-Integration from VueUse TanStack query like API can be implemented even easier (we already have VueUse in place so this would be a direct win)