Using API client

In mobile app code, you can only access the API client from the client-side.

When you create a new component or screen and want to fetch some data, you can use the API client to do so.

Creating a client

We're creating a client-side API client in apps/mobile/src/lib/api/index.tsx file. It's a simple wrapper around the @tanstack/react-query that fetches or mutates data from the API.

It also requires wrapping your app in a ApiProvider component to provide the API client to the rest of the app:

export default function RootLayout({
  children,
}: {
  children: React.ReactNode;
}) {
  return (
    <ApiProvider>
      <SafeAreaProvider>
        <Stack>
          ...
          <Stack.Screen name="index" />
          ...
        </Stack>
        <StatusBar barStyle="light-content" />
      </SafeAreaProvider>
    </ApiProvider>
  );
}

const getBaseUrl = () => {
  /**
   * Gets the IP address of your host-machine. If it cannot automatically find it,
   * you'll have to manually set it. NOTE: Port 3000 should work for most but confirm
   * you don't have anything else running on it, or you'd have to change it.
   *
   * **NOTE**: This is only for development. In production, you'll want to set the
   * baseUrl to your production API URL.
   */
  const debuggerHost = Constants.expoConfig?.hostUri;
  const localhost = debuggerHost?.split(":")[0];
 
  if (!localhost) {
    console.warn("Failed to get localhost. Pointing to production server...");
    return env.EXPO_PUBLIC_SITE_URL;
  }
  return `http://${localhost}:3000`;
};

Queries

Of course, everything comes already configured for you, so you just need to start using api in your components/screens.

For example, to fetch the list of posts you can use the useQuery hook:

import { api } from "~/lib/api";
 
export default function TabOneScreen() {
  const { data: posts, isLoading } = useQuery({
    queryKey: ["posts"],
    queryFn: async () => {
      const response = await api.posts.$get();
 
      if (!response.ok) {
        throw new Error("Failed to fetch posts!");
      }
 
      return response.json();
    },
  });
 
  if (isLoading) {
    return <Text>Loading...</Text>;
  }
 
  /* do something with the data... */
  return (
    <View>
      <Text>{JSON.stringify(posts)}</Text>
    </View>
  );
}

It's using the @tanstack/react-query useQuery API, so you shouldn't have any troubles with it.

Mutations

If you want to perform a mutation in your mobile code, you can use the useMutation hook that comes straight from the integration with Tanstack Query:

import { api } from "~/lib/api";
 
export function CreatePost() {
  const queryClient = useQueryClient();
  const { mutate } = useMutation({
    mutationFn: async (post: PostInput) => {
      const response = await api.posts.$post(post);
 
      if (!response.ok) {
        throw new Error("Failed to create post!");
      },
    },
    onSuccess: () => {
      toast.success("Post created successfully!");
      queryClient.invalidateQueries({ queryKey: ["posts"] });
    },
  });
 
  return (
    <Form>
      <Button onPress={onSubmit(mutate)}>Submit</Button>
    </Form>
  );
}

Here, we're also invalidating the query after the mutation is successful. This is a very important step to make sure that the data is updated in the UI.

Handling responses

As you can see in the examples above, the Hono RPC client returns a plain Response object, which you can use to get the data or handle errors. However, implementing this handling in every query or mutation can be tedious and will introduce unnecessary boilerplate in your codebase.

That's why we've developed the handle function that unwraps the response for you, handles errors, and returns the data in a consistent format. You can safely use it with any procedure from the API client:

import { handle } from "@turbostarter/api/utils";
 
import { api } from "~/lib/api";
 
export default function TabOneScreen() {
  const { data: posts, isLoading } = useQuery({
    queryKey: ["posts"],
    queryFn: handle(api.posts.$get),
  });
 
  if (isLoading) {
    return <Text>Loading...</Text>;
  }
 
  /* do something with the data... */
  return (
    <View>
      <Text>{JSON.stringify(posts)}</Text>
    </View>
  );
}

With this approach, you can focus on the business logic instead of repeatedly writing code to handle API responses in your browser extension components, making your extension's codebase more readable and maintainable.

The same error handling and response unwrapping benefits apply whether you're building web, mobile, or extension interfaces - allowing you to keep your data fetching logic consistent across all platforms.