Editor’s note: This guide to understanding Axios POST requests was last updated on 8 February 2023 to include sections on error handling, using the async/await method, and updating all outdated code.

Sending requests to a web server is one of the most common things we do on the frontend side of web development. Creating a Facebook post, uploading a new Instagram image, sending a tweet, or logging in and signing up on new websites all send requests to a server.

Axios is an open source library that helps us send all these requests by providing a promised-based HTTP client method called POST. In this article, we’ll learn how to use the Axios POST method in vanilla JavaScript and a framework like React. Before proceeding, it is important that you have an understanding of React and how React form elements work. You can read more about forms in React here.

Jump ahead:

• Introduction to Axios
• Why use Axios?
• Using Axios POST
  • How to send an Axios POST in vanilla JavaScript
  • Sending an Axios POST in React
• POST request using Axios with React Hooks
• Using async/await syntax with Axios
• How to handle POST request errors in Axios
• Making multiple concurrent GET requests

Introduction to Axios

The Axios library makes asynchronous HTTP requests to REST endpoints in browsers and Node.js. Because Axios is a lightweight HTTP client for both Node.js and browsers, it allows users to take advantage of JavaScript’s async/await.

Axios is also quite similar to the native JavaScript Fetch API. It offers a lot of methods like POST, PUT, PATCH, GET, DELETE, and more. However, in this article, we will only be looking at the POST method. To understand using the POST method, let’s consider the following scenario:

Take logging into Facebook, for example. When we start using the app, it asks us to either sign up or log in if we already have an account. We must fill in the required form details and send them to a server to do both.

This server then checks what we entered and takes us into the main app or responds with an error message if the details are incorrect. Axios POST is the Axios method that allows us to do that. Below is what an Axios POST request looks like:

axios.post(url[, data[, config]])

From the code above, Axios POST takes three parameters: the URL, data, and config. The URL is the server path to which we are sending the request (note that it is in string format).

The data then encapsulates the request body that we’re sending or parsing to the URL. It is in an object format, which means it has a key and value. The key is the schema the server accepts, while the value is any data type we parse. config is the third parameter where we specify the header content type, authorization, and more. It is also in an object format.

Now that we understand what Axios is and its POST method let’s go ahead and see how to use it.

Why use Axios?

You might wonder why you should use Axios over the native JavaScript fetch() method. Comparatively, Axios has some advantages over fetch(), and we will look at them shortly.

First, Axios allows us to work with only one promise(.then()) and with JSON data by default. This differs from the Fetch API, which requires you to first convert the request body to a JSON string in the first promise, as shown below:

// With Fetch
fetch(url)
 .then((response) => response.json())
 .then((data) => console.log(data))
 .catch((error) => console.log(error));

// With Axios
axios.get(url)
 .then((response) => console.log(response))
 .catch((error) => console.log(error));

Secondly, unlike the Fetch API, Axios can be used on the client as well as on the server. Axios functions are also named to match the HTTP methods. To perform a POST request, you use the .post() method, and so on:

axios.post()   // to perform POST request
axios.get()    // to perform GET request
axios.put()    // to perform PUT request
axios.delete() // to perform DELETE request
axios.patch    // to perform PATCH request

Other reasons to use Axios POST over the Fetch API include the following:

• Canceling requests and requesting timeouts, which fetch() does not allow
• Better error handling by throwing a wide range of errors, including network errors
• The ability to intercept HTTP requests
• Wider browser support

Using Axios POST

Earlier in this article, we mentioned covering how to use the Axios POST method in vanilla JavaScript and React. So, we will start with the former and then proceed to the latter.

Keep in mind that most of this article will focus on working with React, and we will use the reqres.in dummy API for our calls.

How to send an Axios POST in vanilla JavaScript

To use Axios in vanilla JavaScript, we must first add the CDN link in the HTML before using it in the script file. Let’s start by creating two files to use: index.html and index.js:

// index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Parcel Sandbox</title>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="app">
      <h1>Login Account</h1>
      <form action="">
        <label for="email">
          Email
          <input type="email" name="" id="email" />
        </label>
        <label for="password">
          Password
          <input type="password" name="" id="password" />
        </label>
        <button id="btn">Login</button>
      </form>
    </div>
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/axios/dist/axios.min.js"></script>
    <script src="index.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

This HTML file creates a simple login page with two input fields: the email and the password fields and a login button. At the bottom, just above the index.js link, we added the Axios CDN.

Next, we head over to our index.js file we created and get the email input, password input, and button elements using their IDs. We can then add an onClick event listener that triggers the function whenever we click the button:

// index.js

const emailInput = document.getElementById("email");
const passwordInput = document.getElementById("password");
const btn = document.getElementById("btn");

btn.addEventListener("click", () => {
  const email = emailInput.value;
  const password = passwordInput.value;

  axios.post("https://reqres.in/api/login", {
      email: email,
      password: password
    })
    .then((response) => {
      console.log(response);
    });
});

From our reqres.in dummy API, use [email protected] and cityslicka as the email and password values, respectively. If you click the login button, you will get a response token in your console with a 200 status code telling you the POST request was successful, as shown below:

Sending an Axios POST in React

We can now perform the same POST request we just did in the JavaScript example in React. We will first install the Axios package using npm or Yarn to use Axios in React. In your terminal, install Axios by running either of the commands:

$ npm install axios

$ yarn add axios

With Axios installed, let’s go to our App.js file. Unlike in JavaScript, we will first import Axios from the Axios package we installed before using it. Then, in our handleSubmit function, we will call Axios with the POST method just as we did in the vanilla example:

import React, { useState } from "react";
import axios from "axios";

const App = () => {
  const [data, setData] = useState({
    email: "",
    password: ""
  });

  const handleChange = (e) => {
    const value = e.target.value;
    setData({
      ...data,
      [e.target.name]: value
    });
  };

  const handleSubmit = (e) => {
    e.preventDefault();
    const userData = {
      email: data.email,
      password: data.password
    };
    axios.post("https://reqres.in/api/login", userData).then((response) => {
      console.log(response.status, response.data.token);
    });
  };

  return (
    <div>
      <h1>Login Account</h1>
      <form onSubmit={handleSubmit}>
        <label htmlFor="email">
          Email
          <input
            type="email"
            name="email"
            value={data.email}
            onChange={handleChange}
          />
        </label>
        <label htmlFor="password">
          Password
          <input
            type="password"
            name="password"
            value={data.password}
            onChange={handleChange}
          />
        </label>
        <button type="submit">Login</button>
      </form>
    </div>
  );
};

The above code is a practical example of where and how we can make the Axios POST call.

POST request using Axios with React Hooks

Let’s look at another example where we create a new user or register as a new user. We will use the useState React Hooks to hold our user’s state. Next, we set the value of our text inputs to our states (name and job) in our handleChange function.

Finally, on form submission, we make our Axios POST request with the data in our state. See the code below:

// App.js

import React, { useState } from "react";
import './styles.css';
import axios from "axios";

const App = () => {
  const [state, setState] = useState({
    name: "",
    job: ""
  });

  const handleChange = (e) => {
    const value = e.target.value;
    setState({
      ...state,
      [e.target.name]: value
    });
  };

  const handleSubmit = (e) => {
    e.preventDefault();
    const userData = {
      name: state.name,
      job: state.job
    };
    axios.post("https://reqres.in/api/users", userData).then((response) => {
      console.log(response.status, response.data);
    });
  };

  return (
    <div>
      <h1>Register or Create new account</h1>
      <hr />
      <form onSubmit={handleSubmit}>
        <label htmlFor="name">
          Name
          <input
            type="text"
            name="name"
            value={state.name}
            onChange={handleChange}
          />
        </label>
        <label htmlFor="job">
          Job
          <input
            type="text"
            name="job"
            value={state.job}
            onChange={handleChange}
          />
        </label>
        <button type="submit">Register</button>
      </form>
    </div>
  );
};

You can also create a styles.css file and copy the CSS styling below to style the app. It’s nothing fancy, but makes the UI view a bit cooler:

// styles.css

body {
  padding: 0;
  margin: 0;
  box-sizing: border-box;
  font-family: sans-serif;
}
h1 {
  text-align: center;
  margin-top: 30px;
  margin-bottom: 0px;
}
hr {
  margin-bottom: 30px;
  width: 25%;
  border: 1px solid palevioletred;
  background-color: palevioletred;
}
form {
  border: 1px solid black;
  margin: 0 28%;
  padding: 30px 0;
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  align-items: center;
  justify-content: center;
}
label {
  width: 80%;
  text-transform: uppercase;
  font-size: 16px;
  font-weight: bold;
}
input {
  display: block;
  margin-bottom: 25px;
  height: 6vh;
  width: 100%;
}
button {
  padding: 10px 30px;
  text-transform: uppercase;
  cursor: pointer;
}

With that, we have our registration app to use our POST method.

Using async/await syntax with Axios

Similarly, you can use the async/await function to make an Axios POST request. To use async and await, we are going to make use of the try…catch method. We make our calls inside the try block and then get our errors in our catch block. See the code below:

  const handleSubmit = async () => {
    try {
      const response = await axios.post(url, userData);
      console.log(response);
    } catch (error) {
      console.log(error);
    }
  };

From the code above, we are awaiting a response from our POST request before we can perform an operation with the response. It works like the .then() we have seen in the previous example.

How to handle POST request errors in Axios

As previously stated, one of the advantages of using Axios over the native Fetch API is that it allows us to handle error responses better.

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With Axios, it catches errors in the .catch() block and allows us to check for certain conditions to see why the error occurs so we can know how to handle them. Let’s see how we can do that below using the first example:

const App = () => {
  const [data, setData] = useState({
    email: "",
    password: ""
  });

  const handleChange = (e) => {
    const value = e.target.value;
    setData({
      ...data,
      [e.target.name]: value
    });
  };

  const handleSubmit = (e) => {
    e.preventDefault();
    const userData = {
      email: data.email,
      password: data.password
    };
    axios
      .post("https://reqres.in/api/login", userData)
      .then((response) => {
        console.log(response);
      })
      .catch((error) => {
        if (error.response) {
          console.log(error.response);
          console.log("server responded");
        } else if (error.request) {
          console.log("network error");
        } else {
          console.log(error);
        }
      });
  };

  return (
    <div>
      <h1>Login Account</h1>
      <form onSubmit={handleSubmit}>
        <label htmlFor="email">
          Email
          <input
            type="email"
            name="email"
            value={data.email}
            onChange={handleChange}
          />
        </label>
        <label htmlFor="password">
          Password
          <input
            type="password"
            name="password"
            value={data.password}
            onChange={handleChange}
          />
        </label>
        <button type="submit">Login</button>
      </form>
    </div>
  );
};

In the first error condition, we check if there is a response, that is if our request was sent and the server responded.

The errors we can get here range from a 400 error telling us the user does not exist or there are missing credentials, a 404 error telling us the page was not found, to a 501 error telling us the page is unavailable, etc.

In the second error condition, we checked to see if the request was made, but the server received no response. A network error or offline internet network is usually the reason for this error.

And finally, if the error received does not fall under these two categories, then the last error block catches it and tells us what happened. We can also use error.toJSON() to make our error response more readable.

Making multiple concurrent GET requests

This section is a bonus section that covers how to perform multiple GET requests concurrently using Axios with error handling. Since Axios returns a promise, we can perform multiple GET requests using Promise.all():

const getFirstUsers = axios.get("https://reqres.in/api/unknown");
const getSecondUsers = axios.get("https://reqres.in/api/users?page=2");

Promise.all([getFirstUsers, getSecondUsers]).then((response) => {
  const firstResponse = response[0];
  const secondResponse = response[1];
});

However, Axios has a built-in function called .all() that works just as Promise.all():

const firstRequest = axios.get("https://reqres.in/api/unknown");
const secondRequest = axios.get("https://reqres.in/api/users?page=2");
const thirdRequest = axios.get("https://reqres.in/api/users/2");

axios.all([firstRequest, secondRequest, thirdRequest]).then(
  axios.spread((...res) => {
     const firstRes = res[0];
     const secondRes = res[1];
     const thirdRes = res[2];

     console.log(firstRes, secondRes, thirdRes);
  })
)
.catch((error) => {
  if (error.response) {
     // the request was made and the server responded with a status code
     console.log(error.response);
     console.log(error.response.status);
  } else if (error.request) {
     // the request was made but no response was received
     console.log("network error");
  } else {
     // something happened when setting up the request
     console.log(error);
  }
});

You can perform the GET request on any number of APIs of your choice by wrapping it all inside Axios.all(), just like in Promise.all(). It then calls them as an array and returns a promise. Axios also allows you to spread the response.

The above code, however, looks a bit long and unreadable, so let’s rewrite it using Promise.all() and make it more readable:

 let API = [
    "https://reqres.in/api/unknown",
    "https://reqres.in/api/users?page=2",
    "https://reqres.in/api/users/2"
  ];

Promise.all(
  API.map(async (api) => {
    const res = await axios.get(api);
      console.log(res);
  })
).catch((error) => {
  if (error.response) {
    // the request was made and the server responded with a status code
    console.log(error.response);
    console.log(error.response.status);
  } else if (error.request) {
    // the request was made but no response was received
    console.log("network error");
  } else {
    // something happened when setting up the request
    console.log(error.toJSON());
  }
});

Now, it looks shorter and more readable. What we did here is simple: we added all the endpoints we tried to call in an array called API. We then mapped through the API array and performed the GET request on each of them. We are also using async/await to await each API calls before proceeding to the next.

All responses are then resolved under Promise.all, which means that Promise.all() waits for all input promises to resolve before returning a promise.

Conclusion

We have now seen what makes Axios better than the native Fetch API by performing Axios POST requests in vanilla JavaScript and React. We also looked at how Axios allows us to handle our errors better and perform multiple requests using Axios.all and Promise.all.

However, note that Axios.all as it still works today has been deprecated, and it’s advised to use Promise.all instead. This includes, by extension, the Axios.spread. Hopefully, you understood all we did in this article and can now perform POST and concurrent GET requests comfortably. Gracias!