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Frequently Asked Questions

How do I pass other TanStack Query options?​

Say you have an query that looks something like this:

import { useQuery } from '@tanstack/react-query';
import { example } from 'your-generated-code/example-ExampleService_connectquery';

export const Example: FC = () => {
  const { data } = useQuery(example.useQuery({}));
  return <div>{data}</div>;
};

On line 5, example.useQuery({}) just returns an object with a few TanStack Query options preconfigured for you (for example, queryKey and queryFn and onError). All of the Connect-Query hooks APIs work this way, so you can always inspect the TypeScript type to see which specific TanStack query options are configured.

That means, that if you want to add extra TanStack Query options, you can simply spread the object resulting from Connect-Query:

const { data } = useQuery({
  ...example.useQuery({}),

  // Add any extra TanStack Query options here.
  // TypeScript will ensure they're valid!
  refetchInterval: 1000,
});

Why does it work this way?

You may be familiar with other projects that directly wrap react-query directly (such as tRPC). We worked with the TanStack team to develop this API and determined that it's most flexible to simply return an options object.

  1. You have full control over what's actually passed to TanStack Query. For example, if you have a query where you'd like to modify the queryKey, you can do so directly.
  2. It provides full transparency into what Connect Query is actually doing. This means that if you want to see what exactly Connect Query is doing, you can simply inspect the object. This makes for a much more straightforward experience when you're debugging your app.
  3. This means that the resulting call is plain TanStack Query in every way, which means that you can still integrate with any existing TanStack Query plugins or extensions you may already be using.
  4. Not wrapping TanStack Query itself means that you can immediately use Connect-Query with any new functionality or options of TanStack Query.

Is this ready for production?​

Buf has been using Connect-Query in production for some time. Also, there is 100% mandatory test coverage in this project which covers quite a lot of edge cases. That said, this package is given a v0.x semver to designate that it's a new project, and we want to make sure the API is exactly what our users want before we call it "production ready". That also means that some parts of the API may change before v1.0 is reached.

What is Connect-Query's relationship to Connect-Web and Protobuf-ES?​

Here is a high-level overview of how Connect-Query fits in with Connect-Web and Protobuf-ES:

Expand to see a detailed dependency graph

connect-query Dependency Graph

Your Protobuf files serve as the primary input to the code generators protoc-gen-connect-query and protoc-gen-es. Both of these code generators also rely on primitives provided by Protobuf-ES. The Buf CLI produces the generated output. The final generated code uses Transport from Connect-Web and generates a final Connect-Query API.

What is Transport?​

Transport is a regular JavaScript object with two methods, unary and serverStream. See the definition in the Connect-Web codebase here. Transport defines the mechanism by which the browser can call a gRPC-Web or Connect backend. Read more about Transport on the connect docs.

What if I already use Connect-Web?​

You can use Connect-Web and Connect-Query together if you like!

What if I use gRPC-Web?​

Connect-Query also supports gRPC-Web! All you need to do is make sure you call createGrpcWebTransport instead of createConnectTransport.

Do I have to use a code generator?​

No. The code generator just calls createQueryService and createUnaryHooks with the arguments already added, but you are free to do that yourself if you wish.

What if I have a custom Transport?​

If the Transport attached to React Context via the TransportProvider isn't working for you, then you can override transport at every level. For example, you can pass a custom transport directly to the lowest-level API like UnaryHooks.useQuery, but you can also pass it to createQueryHooks or even as high as createQueryService. It's an optional argument for all of those cases and if you choose to omit the transport property, the Transport provided by TransportProvider will be used (only where necessary).

Does this only work with React?​

You can use Connect-Query with any TanStack variant (React, Solid, Svelte, Vue). All methods which are part of the UnaryFunctions type can be used by any framework. The only APIs which are React specific are the TransportProvider, and any APIs starting with use.

Tip: If you're a TanStack Query user that uses something other than React, we'd love to hear from you. Please reach out to us on the Buf Slack.

How do I do Prefetching?​

When you might not have access to React context, you can use the create series of functions and provide a transport directly. For example:

import { say } from "./gen/eliza-ElizaService_connectquery";

function prefetch() {
  return queryClient.prefetchQuery(
    say.createUseQueryOptions({ sentence: "Hello", transport: myTransport })
  );
}

What about Streaming?​

Connect-Query currently only supports Unary RPC methods, which use a simple request/response style of communication similar to GET or POST requests in REST. This is because it aligns most closely with TanStack Query's paradigms. However, we understand that there may be use cases for Server Streaming, Client Streaming, and Bidirectional Streaming, and we're eager to hear about them.

At Buf, we strive to build software that solves real-world problems, so we'd love to learn more about your specific use case. If you can provide a small, reproducible example, it will help us shape the development of a future API for streaming with Connect-Query.

To get started, we invite you to open a pull request with an example project in the examples directory of the Connect-Query repository. If you're not quite sure how to implement your idea, don't worry - we want to see how you envision it working. If you already have an isolated example, you may also provide a simple CodeSandbox or Git repository.

If you're not yet at the point of creating an example project, feel free to open an issue in the repository and describe your use case. We'll follow up with questions to better understand your needs.

Your input and ideas are crucial in shaping the future development of Connect-Query. We appreciate your input and look forward to hearing from you.