The fetch API is a JavaScript function that allows devs to make HTTP requests. You can fetch (or retrieve) data, submit data, update existing data, and more. And all of this comes in a more powerful, flexible, and cleaner package than XMLHttpRequest.

When making these requests, we primarily deal with four types of HTTP methods, although there are several more:

1. GET: For retrieving data from the server. It doesn’t change the server state.
2. POST: For sending data to the server, typically resulting in a change on the server.
3. PUT: For replacing a current resource with a new one.
4. DELETE: For removing a specified resource.

Note that the code samples below use async/await for simplicity. If you don’t want to use async/await, you can change these examples to use the .then() pattern.

For a GET request, try this:

async function getData() {
  try {
    const response = await fetch('https://api.example.com/data');
    const data = await response.json();
    console.log(data);
  } catch (error) {
    console.log('Error:', error);
  }
}
getData();

In this block, we’re retrieving data and making it available under the variable data.

For POSTing JSON data, use this:

async function postData() {
  try {
    const response = await fetch('https://api.example.com/data', {
      method: 'POST',
      headers: {
        'Content-Type': 'application/json'
      },
      body: JSON.stringify({key: 'value'})
    });
    const data = await response.json();
    console.log(data);
  } catch (error) {
    console.log('Error:', error);
  }
}
postData();

This block POSTs JSON data to a resource. You can capture the response JSON as data.