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README.md

Using the AbortController in a React application can provide several benefits:

An abort signal is like a little event emitter, you can trigger it (through the AbortController), and every request started with this signal will be notified and cancelled.

  1. Cancellation of Requests: The AbortController allows you to cancel asynchronous operations, such as network requests, by calling the abort() method on the controller. This is useful in scenarios where you want to cancel a request that is no longer needed, such as when a user navigates away from a page or when a component is unmounted.

  2. Preventing Memory Leaks: When a component is unmounted or no longer needed, ongoing asynchronous operations, such as network requests, can cause memory leaks if they are not properly cleaned up. By using the AbortController, you can cancel those operations and ensure that resources are released, preventing memory leaks and improving the performance of your application.

  3. Improved User Experience: Canceling unnecessary requests can improve the user experience by reducing unnecessary network traffic and speeding up the responsiveness of your application. For example, if a user starts typing in a search box, you can cancel any ongoing requests for previous search queries and initiate a new request for the current query, providing more relevant and up-to-date results.

  4. Simplified Error Handling: When a request is canceled using the AbortController, the corresponding Promise is rejected with an AbortError. This allows you to handle cancellation as a distinct error case and provide specific error handling logic, such as displaying a message to the user or triggering a fallback behavior.

  5. Integration with Hooks and Effects: The AbortController can be easily integrated with React's hooks and effects. For example, you can create an AbortController instance within a useEffect hook and use it to cancel a request when the component unmounts or when certain dependencies change. This provides a clean and declarative way to manage the lifecycle of asynchronous operations in your components.

Overall, using the AbortController in React can help you manage asynchronous operations more effectively, improve the performance and responsiveness of your application, and provide a better user experience by canceling unnecessary requests.

React query with AbortController

const query = useQuery('todos', () => {
    // Create a new AbortController instance for this request
    const controller = new AbortController()
    // Get the abortController's signal
    const signal = controller.signal

    const promise = fetch('/todos', {
        method: 'get',
        // Pass the signal to your request
        signal,
    })

    // Cancel the request if React Query calls the `promise.cancel` method
    promise.cancel = controller.abort

    return promise
})

Additional Reading