Loading Data with Resources

A Resource is a reactive data structure that reflects the current state of an asynchronous task, allowing you to integrate asynchronous Futures into the synchronous reactive system. Rather than waiting for its data to load with .await, you transform the Future into a signal that returns Some(T) if it has resolved, and None if it’s still pending.

You do this by using the create_resource function. This takes two arguments:

  1. a source signal, which will generate a new Future whenever it changes
  2. a fetcher function, which takes the data from that signal and returns a Future

Here’s an example

// our source signal: some synchronous, local state
let (count, set_count) = create_signal(0);

// our resource
let async_data = create_resource(
    count,
    // every time `count` changes, this will run
    |value| async move {
        logging::log!("loading data from API");
        load_data(value).await
    },
);

To create a resource that simply runs once, you can pass a non-reactive, empty source signal:

let once = create_resource(|| (), |_| async move { load_data().await });

To access the value you can use .get() or .with(|data| /* */). These work just like .get() and .with() on a signal—get clones the value and returns it, with applies a closure to it—but for any Resource<_, T>, they always return Option<T>, not T: because it’s always possible that your resource is still loading.

So, you can show the current state of a resource in your view:

let once = create_resource(|| (), |_| async move { load_data().await });
view! {
    <h1>"My Data"</h1>
    {move || match once.get() {
        None => view! { <p>"Loading..."</p> }.into_view(),
        Some(data) => view! { <ShowData data/> }.into_view()
    }}
}

Resources also provide a refetch() method that allows you to manually reload the data (for example, in response to a button click) and a loading() method that returns a ReadSignal<bool> indicating whether the resource is currently loading or not.

Live example

Click to open CodeSandbox.

CodeSandbox Source 
use gloo_timers::future::TimeoutFuture;
use leptos::*;

// Here we define an async function
// This could be anything: a network request, database read, etc.
// Here, we just multiply a number by 10
async fn load_data(value: i32) -> i32 {
    // fake a one-second delay
    TimeoutFuture::new(1_000).await;
    value * 10
}

#[component]
fn App() -> impl IntoView {
    // this count is our synchronous, local state
    let (count, set_count) = create_signal(0);

    // create_resource takes two arguments after its scope
    let async_data = create_resource(
        // the first is the "source signal"
        count,
        // the second is the loader
        // it takes the source signal's value as its argument
        // and does some async work
        |value| async move { load_data(value).await },
    );
    // whenever the source signal changes, the loader reloads

    // you can also create resources that only load once
    // just return the unit type () from the source signal
    // that doesn't depend on anything: we just load it once
    let stable = create_resource(|| (), |_| async move { load_data(1).await });

    // we can access the resource values with .get()
    // this will reactively return None before the Future has resolved
    // and update to Some(T) when it has resolved
    let async_result = move || {
        async_data
            .get()
            .map(|value| format!("Server returned {value:?}"))
            // This loading state will only show before the first load
            .unwrap_or_else(|| "Loading...".into())
    };

    // the resource's loading() method gives us a
    // signal to indicate whether it's currently loading
    let loading = async_data.loading();
    let is_loading = move || if loading() { "Loading..." } else { "Idle." };

    view! {
        <button
            on:click=move |_| {
                set_count.update(|n| *n += 1);
            }
        >
            "Click me"
        </button>
        <p>
            <code>"stable"</code>": " {move || stable.get()}
        </p>
        <p>
            <code>"count"</code>": " {count}
        </p>
        <p>
            <code>"async_value"</code>": "
            {async_result}
            <br/>
            {is_loading}
        </p>
    }
}

fn main() {
    leptos::mount_to_body(App)
}