Collect the Data in React

To be able to work with the datasets, they must first be loaded into the code. We do this by using fetch() within JavaScript.

Fetching the data

To fetch data, I first started by literally copying my written code from the functional patterns course and pasting it into the App component:

import './App.css';

function App() {
  async function fetchData(url) {
    const response = await fetch(url);
    return response.json();
  }

  const data = fetchData('https://opendata.rdw.nl/resource/b3us-f26s.json');
  return (
    <div className="App">
      <Title title="The electric car in the Netherlands"/>
      <div> { data } </div>
    </div>
  );
}

export default App;

But I immediately got to see a very large error:

Error: Objects are not valid as a React child (found: [object Promise]). If you meant to render a collection of children, use an array instead.

And when I tried to console log my data, I saw the following:

Promise { <state>: "pending" }

What I hadn't thought about was the fact that of course this would never work. Firstly, this is because I lacked a promise / async await (the response is an await but converting the response to a json file is also an await). In addition, I had to use the useState and useEffect hook to fetch the data here.

Searching online

Then I started looking for a lot of examples online how you can best fetch data within react with hooks. Eventually I came across an example from reactgo.com in which they create their own 'hook' to fetch the data. I tried to use this to see if that would work in my code. Eventually with a lot of effort I got to see something on my screen with the help of this example. I got to see all data as objects (a json format but as a string). Below is my code of this:

My App component:

import './App.css';
import { useFetch } from './Components/Organisms/FetchingData';

function App() {
  const data = useFetch();
  if (!data) {
    return <p>Loading...</p>;
  }
  console.log(data);
  return <div>{JSON.stringify(data)}</div>
}
 export default App;

My useFetch hook / component:

import React, { useState, useEffect } from 'react';
import { API_1 } from '../../modules/helpers/utils';


export function useFetch () {
  const [data, setData] = useState(() => {
    return null;
  });

  useEffect(() => {
    async function fetchData() {
      let response = await fetch(API_1);
      let json = await response.json();
      setData(prevRes => json);
    }
    fetchData();
  }, []);

  return data;
}

Looking at the code of other students

But now I had the question how to proceed with this. To load and use the data in this way did not seem like a good way to me. This is mainly because there should be an intermediate step: the process in which the data is cleaned up. The way I coded with this I wouldn't have a clue how to start cleaning the data.

For this reason, I decided to search further online for other examples of loading the data using hooks. Still, it was constantly not coming out quite the way I wanted so I decided to take a look at the work of other students. I also went to look at Victor's repository and see how he solved fetching the data. Based on his code, I suddenly saw how I could improve my code.

First I changed my App component file. Here I created all the states I needed for fetching and cleaning the data and also used the useEffect hook. I also created a number of new components that I could reuse. Below is my code:

import './App.css';
import { startText, secondText } from './modules/helpers/utils';
import { Title } from './Components/Atoms/Title';
import { Paragraph } from './Components/Atoms/Paragraph';
import { SubTitle } from './Components/Atoms/SubTitle';
import { useEffect, useState } from 'react';
import { fetchData } from './modules/fetchData';

function App() {
    // Datasets:
  const [parking, setParking] = useState(null);
  const [cars, setCars] = useState(null);
  const [electric, setElectric] = useState(null);

  useEffect(() => {
    fetchData(setParking, setCars, setElectric);
  }, []);

  if (!parking) {
    return <div className="App">
    <p>Loading...</p>
  </div>
  }
  return <div className="App">
    <Title/>
    <Paragraph text={startText} name="firstP"/>
    <SubTitle subtitle="Hoeveel elektrische auto’s rijden er in Nederland?"/>
    <Paragraph text={secondText} name="secondP"/>
    <div>{JSON.stringify(parking[0])}</div>
    <SubTitle subtitle="Welke merken zijn het populairst in Nederland?"/>
    <SubTitle subtitle="Waar staan de meeste laadpalen in Nederland?"/>
  </div>
}
 export default App;

After this I changed my fetchData file. In the meantime I also loaded D3 so that I could fetch the data with it and use it as a json file. More about loading D3 can be read on this page: Wiki - Using D3 in React. Below is my code for the fetchData function:

import { json } from 'd3';
import { API_1, API_2, API_3, API_4, columnArr1, columnArr2 } from './helpers/utils';

// Code from https://github.com/BVictorB/frontend-applications/blob/master/src/helper/fetchData.js
export async function fetchData (setParking, setCars, setElectric) {
  const specData = await json(API_1);
  // const locData = await json(API_2);
  const allCars = await json(API_3);
  const electricCars = await json(API_4);


  setParking(specData);
  setCars(allCars);
  setElectric(electricCars);
};

This way I finally knew how to fetch the data and then clean it up before it shows up on the page. The cleaning of the data can be read on the page: Wiki - Cleaning the data in React.