Welcome

[poef]

👋 Welcome!

Metro is a new take on a browser-based http client. It uses the fetch API, and introduces middleware, similar to Express.

If you have any questions, feature requests or want to tell others about your project using Metro, this is the place to do it.

Enjoy Metro!
Auke van Slooten

[thhck]

Hi !

What was the motivation for this project ?

[poef]

The short answer is that we noticed many projects we made created custom API clients, with similar looking code around fetching resources. Instead of copying and changing code, we'd much rather re-use code as-is. This way you can improve the quality of the code. We call this 'creating lego bricks'.
One system we really like, that allows you to do just that, is Express, specifically its approach to middleware. So I went looking for something similar to that, but on the client, around the Fetch API and couldn't find it. The closest are Axios, with interceptors and I believe superagent also almost has it. However, there are problems with their implementations and superagent, for example predates the Fetch API.
So Metro attempts to be 100% (backwards) compatible with the Fetch API, and add middleware to that.

A stretch goal was to add support for OAuth2 and OpenID Connect, as middleware. And keep the code size small. That has proven succesfull, you can find links to both those middleware solutions in the documentation. A full OIDC client with Metro comes out at around 36KB of minified code. Other clients I've found are typically in the 400 - 500 KB range.