How to Consume a GraphQL API in Next.js with urql and next-urql

In this article, we will learn how to use urql to consume a GraphQL API in a Next.js SSR app.

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please how can we do this with the new app folder and server components with next.js 13.2? thank you.

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What is urql?#

urql is a lightweight, versatile and extensible GraphQL client for modern frontend apps, with support for React, Svelte, Vue and plain JavaScript. It was introduced as an alternative to existing GraphQL clients like Relay and Apollo. These GraphQL clients are largely similar when it comes to setup and use. In the next section, we will see how they compare with each other on various parameters.

Comparison: urql vs Apollo vs Relay#

All three GraphQL clients provide standard features such as queries, mutations, caching and subscriptions, while only differing slightly in implementation.

urql's defaults for configuration are slightly better than those for Apollo, and it has a lower entry barrier thanks to its thorough documentation and native support for features otherwise only available via third-party plugins. Additionally, urql has a powerful caching mechanism offers both normalized and document caching via the @urql/exchange-graphcache package.

urql is built on the principle of having a lightweight core, extensible via middleware called exchanges. This makes it the smallest in bundle size as compared to the other options.



URQLApolloRelay
Supported FrameworksReact, Svelte and VueAlmost all front-end frameworksReact
UsabilityEasy setup, reasonable defaultsEasy setup, defaults usually need tweakingSlightly more complicated to set up
ExtensibilityExtensible via exchangesExtensible via linksExtensible via network layers
CachingNormalized and document cachingNormalized cachingNormalized caching
Bundle Size5.9KB (7.1KB with bindings)32.9KB27.7KB (34.1KB with bindings)

A full, detailed comparison of the clients by different categories of features can be found on the urql website.

Why use urql with Next.js?#

Next.js is one of the most popular React-based frameworks, and urql has first class native support for it via the next-urql package.

Apollo and Relay do not have official plugins with support for Next.js which means the implementation might change between releases of the framework, and any app that uses it will have to be constantly maintained to keep up.

With next-urql, most of the boilerplate involved in setting up urql for Server-Side Rendering (SSR) with Next.js is already done for you. It provides convenience functions such as the withUrqlClient HOC which enables your SSR pages to pre-fetch data via GraphQL queries.

Prerequisites#

Setting Up a Next.js and TypeScript Project#

Next.js requires Node to be pre-installed on your system. You can then scaffold a Next.js TypeScript app using the following command in your terminal/command prompt.

Installing urql#

Once you have a skeleton app set up, you can install the dependencies required for urql.

graphql is a peer dependency of urql and provides the underlying GraphQL implementation. No additional type definitions are required since urql is written in TypeScript.

Installing next-urql#

next-urql provides the Next.js bindings for urql. react-is is a peer dependency of next-urql, required for react-ssr-prepass to walk the component tree and pre-fetch any data required for rendering.

Setting up a GraphQL Client in Next.js with next-urql#

We can use the withUrqlClient HOC to wrap our entire app in the urql context.

This makes the urql client and hooks usable in the rest of our app. The first parameter to withUrqlClient is a function that returns a ClientOptions object. This can be used to pass configuration into the urql client instance, such as the API URL, custom fetch function, request policy and any additional middleware in the exchanges property.

For this tutorial, we will use the GitHub GraphQL API. This API requires you to authenticate using a personal access token. You can follow the steps described here to create one after logging in with your GitHub account. We can then configure our urql client to pass the token as part of the authorization header on each request to the API.