---
navigation.title: 'Custom useFetch'
title: Custom useFetch in Nuxt
description: How to create a custom fetcher for calling your external API in Nuxt 3.
---

When working with Nuxt, you might be making the frontend and fetching an external API, and you might want to set some default options for fetching from your API.

The [`$fetch`](/docs/api/utils/dollarfetch) utility function (used by the [`useFetch`](/docs/api/composables/use-fetch) composable) is intentionally not globally configurable. This is important so that fetching behavior throughout your application remains consistent, and other integrations (like modules) can rely on the behavior of core utilities like `$fetch`.

However, Nuxt provides a way to create a custom fetcher for your API (or multiple fetchers if you have multiple APIs to call).

## Custom `$fetch`

Let's create a custom `$fetch` instance with a [Nuxt plugin](/docs/guide/directory-structure/plugins).

::note
`$fetch` is a configured instance of [ofetch](https://github.com/unjs/ofetch) which supports adding the base URL of your Nuxt server as well as direct function calls during SSR (avoiding HTTP roundtrips).
::

Let's pretend here that:
- The main API is https://api.nuxt.com
- We are storing the JWT token in a session with [nuxt-auth-utils](https://github.com/atinux/nuxt-auth-utils)
- If the API responds with a `401` status code, we redirect the user to the `/login` page

```ts [plugins/api.ts]
export default defineNuxtPlugin((nuxtApp) => {
  const { session } = useUserSession()

  const api = $fetch.create({
    baseURL: 'https://api.nuxt.com',
    onRequest({ request, options, error }) {
      if (session.value?.token) {
        const headers = options.headers ||= {}
        if (Array.isArray(headers)) {
          headers.push(['Authorization', `Bearer ${session.value?.token}`])
        } else if (headers instanceof Headers) {
          headers.set('Authorization', `Bearer ${session.value?.token}`)
        } else {
          headers.Authorization = `Bearer ${session.value?.token}`
        }
      }
    },
    async onResponseError({ response }) {
      if (response.status === 401) {
        await nuxtApp.runWithContext(() => navigateTo('/login'))
      }
    }
  })

  // Expose to useNuxtApp().$api
  return {
    provide: {
      api
    }
  }
})
```

With this Nuxt plugin, `$api` is exposed from `useNuxtApp()` to make API calls directly from the Vue components:

```vue [app.vue]
<script setup>
const { $api } = useNuxtApp()
const { data: modules } = await useAsyncData('modules', () => $api('/modules'))
</script>
```

::callout
Wrapping with [`useAsyncData`](/docs/api/composables/use-async-data) **avoid double data fetching when doing server-side rendering** (server & client on hydration).
::

## Custom `useFetch`/`useAsyncData`

Now that `$api` has the logic we want, let's create a `useAPI` composable to replace the usage of `useAsyncData` + `$api`:

```ts [composables/useAPI.ts]
import type { UseFetchOptions } from 'nuxt/app'

export function useAPI<T>(
  url: string | (() => string),
  options?: UseFetchOptions<T>,
) {
  return useFetch(url, {
    ...options,
    $fetch: useNuxtApp().$api
  })
}
```

Let's use the new composable and have a nice and clean component:

```vue [app.vue]
<script setup>
const { data: modules } = await useAPI('/modules')
</script>
```

::note
This example demonstrates how to use a custom `useFetch`, but the same structure is identical for a custom `useAsyncData`.
::

::callout{icon="i-simple-icons-youtube" color="red" to="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXH8Tr-exhI"}
Watch a video about custom `$fetch` and Repository Pattern in Nuxt.
::

::note
We are currently discussing to find a cleaner way to let you create a custom fetcher, see https://github.com/nuxt/nuxt/issues/14736.
::