Getting Started

What Is This?

APIful provides a unified interface to manage all your API interactions by setting up a client with default fetch options, such as the base API URL and headers. Extensions add a variety of features to the client to match your favorite flavor of API management.

You can use one of the built-in extensions to get started right away, or create your own custom extension to meet your specific needs.

Installation

Get started by installing apiful in your project. Choose your package manager:

pnpm

pnpm add -D apiful

yarn

yarn add -D apiful

npm

npm install -D apiful

Your First API Client

Create your first API client by initialising it with a base URL and a sample bearer token for authorization:

import { createClient } from 'apiful'

const baseURL = '<your-api-base-url>'
const client = createClient({
  baseURL,
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.API_KEY}`,
  },
})

NOTE

The createClient function returns an ApiClient instance that does not yet have a call signature. You will need to add a base extension to the client in order to make API requests. Read on to learn how to do this.

Choose a Built-in Extension

For most use cases, one of the included base extensions should be sufficient. The following adapters are available:

• ofetch
• OpenAPI
• API Router

For example, The ofetchBuilder wraps ofetch to handle API requests. It is the easiest way to get started with APIful.

Continuing from the previous example, add the ofetchBuilder to your client by chaining the with method. This will extend the client with the ofetch extension:

import { createClient, ofetchBuilder } from 'apiful'

const baseURL = '<your-base-url>'

// Initialise the ofetch adapter
const adapter = ofetchBuilder()
const client = createClient({
  baseURL,
  headers: {
    Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.API_KEY}`,
  },
})
  .with(adapter)

Now that you have a client with ofetch as the base extension, you can make API requests:

// GET request to <baseURL>/users/1
await client('users/1', { method: 'GET' })

TIP

If your API provides an OpenAPI schema, follow the OpenAPI extension documentation to learn more about how to generate TypeScript definitions from your OpenAPI schema files and create fully typed API clients.

Writing Extensions

Each client can have more than one extension. This means that you can chain with methods to add multiple extensions to your client.

For example, you can add a custom extension to log the default fetch options:

import type { MethodsExtensionBuilder } from 'apiful'

const logExtension = (client => ({
  logDefaults() {
    console.log('Default fetch options:', client.defaultOptions)
  }
})) satisfies MethodsExtensionBuilder

const extendedClient = client
  .with(logExtension)

extendedClient.logDefaults() // { baseURL: '<your-base-url>', headers: { Authorization: 'Bearer <your-bearer-token>' } }

If you have specific requirements that are not covered by the included extensions, you can create your own extensions. Follow the Custom Extensions guide to learn more.