How to Refetch a Different Query After Retrying in React Query

Learn how to effectively handle retry logic in React Query by triggering refetching of a different query. This guide explains how to implement custom retry logic to refresh tokens and refetch session data seamlessly.
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Handling Retry Logic with React Query

In the world of modern web development, managing API interactions smoothly is crucial for a great user experience. If you're using React with React Query, you may run into an issue when trying to refetch a different query after performing a retry on another. Specifically, we want to manage authentication token refreshes when we encounter a 401 Unauthorized error.

In this post, we'll dive into a common problem and see how to implement a custom retry solution that triggers a refetch of another query efficiently.

Understanding the Problem

Imagine you have implemented a way to fetch session data from an API and want to refresh the user’s authentication token when you receive a 401 Unauthorized error. You might want to retry your original request and, if successful, subsequently refetch your session data. However, despite using refetchQueries or invalidateQueries methods from React Query, you find that the refetch does not trigger as expected.

The Challenge

You might have written code similar to the following to handle your queries and retries:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

In this setup, you might expect the fetchSession query to refetch after a successful token refresh, but it doesn't seem to work as intended.

The Solution: Simplifying Retry Logic

The key issue lies in how the retry function is implemented. It should not be asynchronous, as it expects a boolean return type. Instead of using the retry function for token management, consider handling token refresh directly in your query function.

Step-By-Step Implementation

Let’s break down a clearer approach using axios or your preferred HTTP client:

Define Your Query Logic: Instead of wrapping the query in a retry function, directly manage errors within the query function itself.

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Token Management: Here, upon catching a 401 status code, your code will attempt to refresh the token and then retry the original request. This way, you don't need separate retry logic since it's handled synchronously within the useQuery.

Refetch Logic: If the token is successfully refreshed, you can safely refetch the session data without worrying about separate query calls.

By structuring your logic this way, you ensure that refetching the session works seamlessly right after a successful token refresh.

Conclusion

Managing retries and refetching in React Query can be tricky, especially when dealing with authentication. By simplifying your logic and placing token handling directly in the query function, you can improve clarity and ensure that refetching of relevant data happens smoothly.

If you’re facing similar issues, consider adopting this approach to enhance your API interaction flow in React applications.

Feel free to share your thoughts or further questions in the comments below!