Axios Tutorial: Get/Post/Put/Delete Request example

This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Tien Nguyen

Axios is a promise-based HTTP Client Javascript library for Node.js and Browser. In this tutorial, we will create examples that use Axios to make Get/Post/Put/Delete request. The final section shows a simple Axios HTTP Client to interact with Rest API.

Article from BezKoder

Axios Features

Axios can run in the Node.js and Browser with the same codebase.

On the server-side it uses the native Node.js http module
On the client-side (browser) it uses XMLHttpRequests

Additionally, there are important features that you should know:

Supports the Promise API
Intercept request and response (Axios Interceptors tutorial)
Transform request and response data
Cancel requests
Automatic transforms for JSON data
Client side support for protecting against XSRF

(from https://github.com/axios/axios#features)

Install Axios

We can add Axios to our project/code with one of following simple ways:

npm:

npm install axios

bower:

bower install axios

yarn:

yarn add axios

CDN:

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/axios/dist/axios.min.js"></script>

Or:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/axios/dist/axios.min.js"></script>

Axios Response Object schema

The response for a Axios request contains:

data: parsed response body provided by the server
status: HTTP status code
statusText: HTTP status message
headers: HTTP headers (lower case)
config: the request config that was provided to axios
request: the last client request instance that generated this response

For example:

{
  "data": {
    "id": 1,
    "title": "Axios Request",
    "description": "Tut#1 Description",
    "published": true
  },
  "status": 200,
  "statusText": "OK",
  "headers": {
    "content-length": "162",
    "content-type": "application/json; charset=utf-8"
  },
  "config": {
    "url": "/tutorials/1",
    "method": "get",
    "headers": {
      "Accept": "application/json, text/plain, */*"
    },
    "baseURL": "http://localhost:8080/api",
    "transformRequest": [
      null
    ],
    "transformResponse": [
      null
    ],
    "timeout": 0,
    "xsrfCookieName": "XSRF-TOKEN",
    "xsrfHeaderName": "X-XSRF-TOKEN",
    "maxContentLength": -1,
    "maxBodyLength": -1
  }
}

Axios Response Body

Axios Response Object has data field that contains the parsed response body.
We can use then or await to receive the response body as follows:

axios.get('/bezkoder.com/tutorials')
  .then(function (response) {
    console.log(response.data);
  });

const { data } = await axios.get(url);

Axios Error handling

We use catch() for handling errors.

axios.get('/bezkoder.com/tutorials')
  .then(...)
  .catch(function (error) {
    if (error.response) { // get response with a status code not in range 2xx
      console.log(error.response.data);
      console.log(error.response.status);
      console.log(error.response.headers);
    } else if (error.request) { // no response
      console.log(error.request);
      // instance of XMLHttpRequest in the browser
      // instance ofhttp.ClientRequest in node.js
    } else { // Something wrong in setting up the request
      console.log('Error', error.message);
    }
    console.log(error.config);
  });

Axios Error handling with async-await

If you want to use async-await, just wrap the axios call with try/catch block.

async function getTutorial() {
  try {
    const response = await axios.get('/bezkoder.com/tutorials');
    console.log(response);
  } catch (error) {
    if (error.response) { // get response with a status code not in range 2xx
      console.log(error.response.data);
      console.log(error.response.status);
      console.log(error.response.headers);
    } else if (error.request) { // no response
      console.log(error.request);
    } else { // Something wrong in setting up the request
      console.log('Error', error.message);
    }
    console.log(error.config);
  }
}

Axios GET request

axios.get('/bezkoder.com/tutorials')
  .then(function (response) {
    console.log(response);
  })
  .catch(function (error) {
    console.log(error);
  })
  .then(function () {
    // always executed
  });

Async/await:

async function getTutorial() {
  try {
    const response = await axios.get('/bezkoder.com/tutorials');
    console.log(response);
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error);
  }
}

Axios GET with params

You can use the params config option to set query string params.

axios.get(
  '/bezkoder.com/tutorials',
  {
    params: {
      title: 'ios'
    }
  }
);

And this is equivalent:

axios.get('/tutorials?title=ios');

Axios GET with headers

To send Axios GET request with Headers, we pass an option object with headers property.

axios.get(
  '/bezkoder.com/tutorials',
  {
    headers: {
      'x-access-token': 'token-value'
    }
  }
);

Axios GET with params and headers

We can merge params and headers in a Axios GET request like this.

axios.get(
  '/bezkoder.com/tutorials',
  {
    params: {
      title: 'ios'
    },
    headers: {
      'x-access-token': 'token-value'
    }
  }
);

Axios POST with body

You can perform an Axios POST object request with body as second parameter.

axios.post(
  '/bezkoder.com/tutorials',
  {
    title: title,
    description: description,
  }
);

Axios POST with headers

To send Axios POST request with Headers, we pass an option object with headers property right after the body.

await axios.post(
  '/bezkoder.com/tutorials',
  {
    title: title,
    description: description,
  },
  {
    headers: {
      "x-access-token": "token-value",
    },
  }
);

Axios PUT request

You can perform an Axios PUT json object request with body as second parameter.

axios.put(
  '/bezkoder.com/tutorials/42',
  {
    title: title,
    description: description,
    published: true,
  }
);

Axios PUT with headers

To send Axios PUT request with Headers, we pass an option object with headers property right after the body.

axios.put(
  '/bezkoder.com/tutorials/42',
  {
    title: title,
    description: description,
    published: true,
  },
  {
    headers: {
      "x-access-token": "token-value",
    },
  }
);

Axios DELETE request

axios.delete('/bezkoder.com/tutorials/42');

Axios DELETE with headers

To send Axios DELETE request with Headers, we pass an option object with headers property.

axios.delete(
  '/bezkoder.com/tutorials/42',
  {
    headers: {
      "x-access-token": "token-value",
    },
  }
);

Create Axios instance

We can create a new instance of axios using axios.create(config) method.


const instance = axios.create({
  baseURL: 'https://bezkoder.com/api/',
  timeout: 2000,
  headers: {'X-Custom-Header': 'bezkoder'}
});

Axios Request example with Rest API

We will build a HTTP Client to make CRUD requests to Rest API in that:

Axios GET request: get all Tutorials, get Tutorial by Id, find Tutorial by title
Axios POST request: create new Tutorial
Axios PUT request: update an existing Tutorial
Axios DELETE request: delete a Tutorial, delete all Tutorials

This Axios Client works with the following Web API:

Methods	Urls	Actions
POST	/api/tutorials	create new Tutorial
GET	/api/tutorials	retrieve all Tutorials
GET	/api/tutorials/:id	retrieve a Tutorial by `:id`
PUT	/api/tutorials/:id	update a Tutorial by `:id`
DELETE	/api/tutorials/:id	delete a Tutorial by `:id`
DELETE	/api/tutorials	delete all Tutorials
GET	/api/tutorials?title=[keyword]	find all Tutorials which title contains `keyword`

You can find step by step to build a Server like this in one of these posts:

Remember that you need to configure CORS: Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *.
It helps the REST APIs can be accessed by any origin.

Create a Tutorial using axios POST request:

Retrieve all Tutorials using axios GET request:

Retrieve a Tutorial by Id using axios GET request:

Find Tutorials by title using axios GET request with params:

Update a Tutorial using axios PUT request:

Delete Tutorial using axios DELETE request:

Source Code

index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
    <title>Axios Requests example</title>
    <link
      rel="stylesheet"
      href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bootstrap@4.6.0/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css"
    />
  </head>
  <body>
    <div class="container my-3" style="max-width: 600px">
      <h3>Axios Requests example</h3>

      <div class="card mt-3">
        <div class="card-header">Axios GET Request - BezKoder.com</div>
        <div class="card-body">
          <div class="input-group input-group-sm">
            <button class="btn btn-sm btn-primary" onclick="getAllData()">Get All</button>

            <input type="text" id="get-id" class="form-control ml-2" placeholder="Id">
            <div class="input-group-append">
              <button class="btn btn-sm btn-primary" onclick="getDataById()">Get by Id</button>
            </div>

            <input type="text" id="get-title" class="form-control ml-2" placeholder="Title">
            <div class="input-group-append">
              <button class="btn btn-sm btn-primary" onclick="getDataByTitle()">Find By Title</button>
            </div>

            <button class="btn btn-sm btn-warning ml-2" onclick="clearGetOutput()">Clear</button>
          </div>   

          <div id="getResult"></div>
        </div>
      </div>

      <div class="card mt-3">
        <div class="card-header">Axios POST Request - BezKoder.com</div>
        <div class="card-body">
          <div class="form-group">
            <input type="text" class="form-control" id="post-title" placeholder="Title">
          </div>
          <div class="form-group">
            <input type="text" class="form-control" id="post-description" placeholder="Description">
          </div>
          <button class="btn btn-sm btn-primary" onclick="postData()">Post Data</button>
          <button class="btn btn-sm btn-warning" onclick="clearPostOutput()">Clear</button>

          <div id="postResult"></div>
        </div>
      </div>

      <div class="card mt-3">
        <div class="card-header">Axios PUT Request - BezKoder.com</div>
        <div class="card-body">
          <div class="form-group">
            <input type="text" class="form-control" id="put-id" placeholder="Id">
          </div>
          <div class="form-group">
            <input type="text" class="form-control" id="put-title" placeholder="Title">
          </div>
          <div class="form-group">
            <input type="text" class="form-control" id="put-description" placeholder="Description">
          </div>
          <div class="form-check">
            <input type="checkbox" class="form-check-input" id="put-published">
            <label class="form-check-label" for="put-published">Publish</label>
          </div>
          <div class="form-group mt-2">
            <button class="btn btn-sm btn-primary" onclick="putData()">Update Data</button>
            <button class="btn btn-sm btn-warning" onclick="clearPutOutput()">Clear</button>
          </div>

          <div id="putResult"></div>
        </div>
      </div>

      <div class="card mt-3">
        <div class="card-header">Axios DELETE Request - BezKoder.com</div>
        <div class="card-body">
          <div class="input-group input-group-sm">
            <button class="btn btn-sm btn-danger" onclick="deleteAllData()">Delete All</button>

            <input type="text" id="delete-id" class="form-control ml-2" placeholder="Id">
            <div class="input-group-append">
              <button class="btn btn-sm btn-danger" onclick="deleteDataById()">Delete by Id</button>
            </div>

            <button class="btn btn-sm btn-warning ml-2" onclick="clearDeleteOutput()">Clear</button>
          </div>    

          <div id="deleteResult"></div>      
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>

    <script src="https://unpkg.com/axios/dist/axios.min.js"></script>

    <script src="main.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>