General Concepts

• refine core is fully independent of UI. So you can use core components and hooks without any UI dependency.
• All the data related hooks(useTable, useForm, useList etc.) of refine can be given some common properties like resource, meta, queryOptions etc.

resource

refine passes the resource to the dataProvider as a params. This parameter is usually used to as a API endpoint path. It all depends on how to handle the resource in your dataProvider. See the creating a data provider section for an example of how resource are handled.

How does refine know what the resource value is?

1- The resource value is determined from the active route where the component or the hook is used.

info

To make the inference work, you need to pass the routerProvider prop to the <Refine> component from your router package choice.

Like below, if you are using the hook in the <PostList> component, the resource value defaults to "posts". Because the active route is /posts and its also defined in the resources prop.

src/App.tsx

import { Refine } from "@refinedev/core";
import dataProvider from "@refinedev/simple-rest";
import routerBindings from "@refinedev/react-router-v6";

import { BrowserRouter, Routes, Route } from "react-router-dom";

import { PostList } from "pages/posts/list.tsx";

const App: React.FC = () => {
    return (
        <BrowserRouter>
            <Refine
                routerProvider={routerProvider}
                dataProvider={dataProvider("https://api.fake-rest.refine.dev")}
                resources={[
                    {
                        name: "posts",
                        list: "/posts",
                    },
                ]}
            >
                <Routes>
                    <Route path="/posts" element={<PostList />} />
                </Routes>
            </Refine>
        </BrowserRouter>
    );
};

export default App;

2- The resource value is determined from the resource prop of the hook.

You can override the default resource value hook by passing the resource prop to the hook like below:

src/pages/posts/list.tsx

import { useTable } from "@refinedev/core";

const PostList: React.FC = () => {
    const result = useTable({
        resource: "users",
    });

    return <div>...</div>;
};

info

The value you pass to the resource property is also used to determine the active resource from the resources array. Defining the resource in the resources array is not required for your API interactions to work but it will enable features of refine such as redirecting to the list page after a successful create or update operation.

How can I request an API with nested route?

Refer to how to use resource with nested routes documentation for more information. →

meta

meta is used following three purposes:

• To pass additional information to data provider methods.
• Generate GraphQL queries using plain JavaScript Objects (JSON).
• Hooks related with routing also uses meta to fill additional parameters in the target routes.

How to use meta to pass additional information to data provider methods?

useOne({
    resource: "posts",
    id: 1,
    meta: {
        headers: { "x-meta-data": "true" },
    },
});

const myDataProvider = {
    ...
    getOne: async ({ resource, id, meta }) => {
        const headers = meta?.headers ?? {};
        const url = `${apiUrl}/${resource}/${id}`;

        const { data } = await httpClient.get(url, { headers });

        return {
            data,
        };
    },
    ...
};

In the above example, we pass the headers property in the meta object to the getOne method. With similar logic, you can pass any properties to specifically handle the data provider methods.

Refer to the how to pass meta to your existing dataProvider methods. →

Refer to the GraphQL guide to learn how to use meta to create GraphQL queries. →