Decide which SSR Data Fetching Library to use

[phoenisx]

List of Libraries that has been discussed till date:

• isomorphic-fetch
• isomorphic-unfetch
• axios
• cross-fetch
• node-fetch
• whatwg-fetch

Last two libraries, if used, should be used together, as they are not isomorphic in nature.

@Zeko369 suggested, respective to PR #140, we are already using isomorphic-fetch

@Sonicrida suggested axios is not maintained for a while and has some security vulnerabilities.
@Shub1427 concluded that isomorphic-fetch, isomorphic-unfetch and axios hasn't been maintained for a long period, though recently from September axios has a new core developer helping to resolve issues as fast as he could.

Regarding security vulnerability for axios, it was a false alarm as per this.

@nik-john suggested to use cross-fetch which seems a viable option, as it's being actively maintained, and is a wrapper around node-fetch and whatwg-fetch (which I was trying to do by myself in PR #166).

This discussion needs to be concluded, as the PR #166 is been on hold for a long time now due to this and acts as a blocker to the same.

[allella]

Pinging @vaibhavsingh97 @joelrozen @ThomasRoest @xarielx @Haxified for help resolving this decision.

[nik-john]

I personally use node-fetch on my projects but my arguments for cross-fetch are that it seems to be well maintained, but it looks like it's not as widely adopted yet.

[joelrozen]

Another one to consider is SWR (https://github.com/zeit/swr) which, given we are using zeit's next.js anyway, may be the better way to go.

[Zeko369]

@joelrozen SWR is a wrapper around any fetch function so that isn't what we're looking for, since we still need to provide a fetcher function

[joelrozen]

@Zeko369 ahhhh ooops.
Okay, well I'll go with whatever every one else decides, since I've only had experience with axios anyway and that seems to be out, so no opinion either way on the other choices.

[phoenisx]

Personally, I would like to work with node-fetch and whatwg-fetch. They are well maintained and widely used as well.

cross-fetch is a wrapper around above two libs, which we can do ourselves or use cross-fetch instead.

NextJS supports conditional imports:

• Q: How to execute code client-side only vercel/next.js#2473
• Or we can also do something like Module not found: Can't resolve 'fs' vercel/next.js#7755 (comment), where webpack configs is changed, but I don't think this will work for our case, as nextjs/webpack won't recompile the app while rendering it on Server and sending it as a serialized string response to browser.

[Zeko369]

+1 cross-fetch

[allella]

There seems to be support for from @Zeko369, @Shub1427 @nik-john about cross-fetch (a wrapper around node-fetch and whatwg-fetch)

@Sonicrida @joelrozen any opposition?

[robertt]

cross-fetch 100%

[Zeko369]

@timmyichen

[timmyichen]

I'm pretty indifferent about which library is chosen as long as it fulfills all our needs

[Vitao18]

I'd prefer to use cross-fetch

[nik-john]

Ok closing this as cross-fetch seems to be the consensus

@Shub1427 Hopefully this unblocks you

[bernhard-hofmann]

Do we have the criteria for selection?

There seem to be a lot of opinions and they're based on a variety of criteria. If we start with a prioritised list of requirements and desires I think we'll find it easier to reach an objective consensus.

Sorry, I didn't spot that this was closed. Could we retrospectively define the criteria we used for the selection?

[nik-john]

@bernhard-hofmann It's pretty straight forward - because we're going to use this library extensively on Chapter (in no particular order):

• It needs to be a robust library with no glaring open issues
• It needs to perform all functions of an HTTP library
• It has to be actively maintained
• It needs to work seamlessly on the server as well as the client
• It should have a hassle-free integration with NextJS