react-native: HTTP Fetch fails with "TypeError: Network request failed" => Resolved

Description

There are 83 issues opened and unanswered about network requests failing with this generic error. The main causes of the pain are:

  1. Not getting an answer from the team
  2. The exception is far too generic and does not suggest the origin of the problem

Problem description

Using fetch to get/post on a HTTPS web server which is using a valid and trusted but not public CA.

  • Using Chrome and other apps the requests are always successful and without certificate problems

Sample code in react native:

static async Post(): Promise<string> {
    let srv = "my.domain.com";
    let port = 5101;
    let device = "abcd";
    let url = `https://${srv}:${port}/Do/Something?devicename=${device}`;

    try {
        let response = await fetch(url, {
            method: 'POST',
            headers: {
                'Accept': 'application/json',
                'Content-type':'application/json'
            },
            body: JSON.stringify({
                key: 'value',
            })
        });

        if(response.status !== 200) throw new Error(`Can't open  ${srv} for ${device} with status ${response.status}`);
        return response.json();
    }
    catch(e) {
        console.log(e);
        throw(e);
    }
}

Solution

Due to Android restrictions, a network_security_config configuration must be added to the application. It is an xml file that can be added by following these steps:

  1. Edit the android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml
  2. Add the android:networkSecurityConfig="@xml/network_security_config" to the <application /> tag
  3. Create the folder android/app/src/main/res/xml and inside a file called network_security_config.xml
  4. If you don’t want to install the CA in the Android certificates, add the folder android/app/src/main/res/raw

Variant 1: using the certificates added manually to Android.

In this case the CA must be visible in the User Certificates in the Android Settings. Try using them by opening a website that uses those certificates in Chrome to verify they are valid and correctly installed.

Content of the network_security_config.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<network-security-config>
    <domain-config>
        <!-- Localhost config is NEEDED from react-native for the bundling to work  -->
        <domain-config cleartextTrafficPermitted="true">
            <domain includeSubdomains="true">127.0.0.1</domain>
            <domain includeSubdomains="true">10.0.0.1</domain>
            <domain includeSubdomains="true">localhost</domain>
        </domain-config>

        <domain includeSubdomains="true">my.domain.com</domain>
        <trust-anchors>
            <certificates src="user"/>
            <certificates src="system"/>
        </trust-anchors>
    </domain-config>
</network-security-config>

The <certificates src="user"/> is the one giving access to the certificates installed manually.

Variant 2: using a certificate bundled with the app

You should export (using ssl) a pem certificate containing just the public key, naming it “ca” (no extension). Copy the certificate in the raw folder

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<network-security-config>
    <domain-config>
        <!-- Localhost config is NEEDED from react-native for the bundling to work  -->
        <domain-config cleartextTrafficPermitted="true">
            <domain includeSubdomains="true">127.0.0.1</domain>
            <domain includeSubdomains="true">10.0.0.1</domain>
            <domain includeSubdomains="true">localhost</domain>
        </domain-config>

        <domain includeSubdomains="true">my.domain.com</domain>
        <trust-anchors>
            <certificates src="@raw/ca"/>
            <certificates src="system"/>
        </trust-anchors>
    </domain-config>
</network-security-config>

Important note (added on June 22, 2022)

The local traffic (with the packager) must be unencrypted. For this reason the <domain-config /> must contain the clearTrafficPermitted=true. It is also important adding the ip addresses used from react-native when debugging otherwise the application will crash because of the android:networkSecurityConfig="@xml/network_security_config" attribute. If you see the app crashing, take not of the ip used internally from react native and add it/them to this list. For example:

<domain-config cleartextTrafficPermitted="true">
            <domain includeSubdomains="true">127.0.0.1</domain>
            <domain includeSubdomains="true">10.0.0.1</domain>
            <domain includeSubdomains="true">10.0.1.1</domain>
            <domain includeSubdomains="true">10.0.2.2</domain>
            <domain includeSubdomains="true">localhost</domain>
        </domain-config>

Requested fix: please never throw exceptions with a generic message, they are only a huge pain.

Version

0.67.0

Output of npx react-native info

info Fetching system and libraries information… System: OS: Windows 10 10.0.19044 CPU: (8) x64 Intel® Core™ i7-6700 CPU @ 3.40GHz Memory: 8.20 GB / 31.93 GB Binaries: Node: 16.13.0 - C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.EXE Yarn: 1.22.4 - C:\Program Files (x86)\Yarn\bin\yarn.CMD npm: 8.1.3 - C:\Program Files\nodejs\npm.CMD Watchman: Not Found SDKs: Android SDK: API Levels: 19, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 Build Tools: 19.1.0, 21.1.2, 22.0.1, 23.0.1, 23.0.3, 26.0.2, 27.0.0, 28.0.0, 28.0.3, 29.0.2, 30.0.2 System Images: android-27 | Google APIs Intel x86 Atom, android-27 | Google Play Intel x86 Atom Android NDK: 22.1.7171670 Windows SDK: AllowDevelopmentWithoutDevLicense: Enabled AllowAllTrustedApps: Enabled Versions: 10.0.10586.0, 10.0.14393.0, 10.0.15063.0, 10.0.16299.0, 10.0.17134.0, 10.0.17763.0, 10.0.18362.0, 10.0.19041.0 IDEs: Android Studio: Version 2020.3.0.0 AI-203.7717.56.2031.7935034 Visual Studio: 17.1.32104.313 (Visual Studio Enterprise 2022), 16.11.32002.261 (Visual Studio Enterprise 2019) Languages: Java: 1.8.0_302 npmPackages: @react-native-community/cli: Not Found react: 17.0.2 => 17.0.2 react-native: 0.66.4 => 0.66.4 react-native-windows: Not Found npmGlobalPackages: react-native: Not Found

Steps to reproduce

Use the above code to make an HTTPS request to a website protected with certificates that are not public. They will not succeed with a generic exception (as for the issue title)

Repeat the request to a public website and it will succeed. The issue is the exception being too generic.

Snack, code example, screenshot, or link to a repository

No response

About this issue

  • Original URL
  • State: open
  • Created 2 years ago
  • Reactions: 65
  • Comments: 49 (1 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

It is an habit in this repo to ignore important issues (not only this one) for a very long time. I start believing RN is not that worthy to invest in.

+53
raffaeler on Feb 19, 2022

2023 and they haven’t addressed this generic exception issue. I’ve been stuck on this for days, trying every solution and nothing works. I just wanted to know what the actual error is instead of shooting on the dark.

+11
JoaoSoaresDev on Feb 24, 2023

My issue was fixed when I restarted the emulator

+11
amalmohann on Jun 14, 2022

It’s simply sad that this catastrophic DX failure in RN has been around essentially since the beginning, yet there still is no clear roadmap for fixing it (or simply propagating the underlying errors to make it actually debuggable). It’s barely even being acknowledged, yet is one of the most asked-about problems with RN.

Thanks a ton @raffaeler for doing God’s work documenting issues like this, RN would more or less be dead without community members like you.

+6
csvan on Feb 18, 2024

what do yo suggest for people using Expo, as there is no direct android folder of manifest file.

+5
GreatGodson on Dec 20, 2023

Still to this day, the error messages for fetch network errors are super super vague. Is this going to get fixed?

+5
GNUGradyn on Oct 1, 2023

It might be worth noting that I saw this error when I attempted to send a JSON.stringify'd body, without the 'Content-type':'application/json' header.

+4
daraul on Apr 24, 2023

It looks like the underlying okhttp library has quite good error detection and reporting. Somehow though, either the react-native networking layer, or the whatwg-fetch doesn’t capture that!

+4
ariccio on Feb 19, 2022

Thank you @hoaxvo16 but I already posted the solution in this thread. My request is react-native providing a decent error so that nobody else has to spend hours in trying to resolve it. Also, since this an OSS project, it would be nice for some of the owner to “say something” instead of infinite silence.

+3
raffaeler on Feb 24, 2022

POSIBLE SOLUTION

I faced the same problem (iOS working & Android failure) and in the end it turned out to be a problem because the domain to which the request was made contained an underscore (_) character. Removing the underscore by a dash solved the problem.

Previos domain https://my_domain.com

Working domain https://my-domain.com/

If you are using a domain other than localhost and use special characters it is possible that it may fail because of this. I will update my comment if I find any additional information.

I hope it helps 🙏🏻

+2
GuillemGarciaDev on Oct 10, 2023

I have face the same issue when I am testing app on emulator and physical device, but the solution above do not work for me.

The changes I wrote are well-documented in the Android docs. If you have errors, there is certainly something wrong with your project. You should first carefully fix them first.

Thank you for the reply. I have found the reason of that is because the manifest merger failed to merge debug/AndroidManifest.xml and main/AndroidManifest.xml, I make two AndroidManifest.xml have same user-permission configuration and it’s work right now.

<!-- Two AndroidManifest.xml have same user-permission configure -->
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />
    ...
</manifest>
+2
KPB98115 on Jun 28, 2023

Lemme just jump in that I’m always an advocate for bubbling as much error info up the stack as possible. There are those of us who go to great lengths, perhaps even cursed lengths, to make use of the info that is available from web fetch. It does actually make a big difference in debugging for those of us who go to these lengths, it’s saved me untold hours of debugging, and its vastly more useful than the standard “failed to fetch” network error. If I had the time, and lacked the extreme disdain for Java, I’d write the patch myself!

+2
ariccio on Feb 13, 2023

We were also facing similar issue in Production and multiple customers complained about the problem of not able to access our App due to this error. Upon extensive debugging, we found that our cloud infra only accepted requests which had IPv4 addresses. If any device network wasn’t able to allocate an IPv4 address then all such requests were getting dropped with the App receiving the “Network Request Failed” error. Hope this helps!

+1
manishranjannits on Feb 17, 2023

For the entertainment of other readers, here’s two issues I’ve opened about goofy issues I encounter when errors are not super well reported (or reportable) https://github.com/puma/puma/issues/2894 https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/43439

+1
ariccio on Feb 13, 2023

Check if your SSL is properly configured here.

This does not make any sense. The point of this entire thread is to use a non public CA as stated in the initial post, which is extremly common in any enterprise scenario.

The link you posted is a service that can only verify public websites. Also, I strongly reccomend to verify TLS (SSL does not exist anymore) using openssl utilities which are the most updated.

+1
raffaeler on Dec 13, 2022

@MuhammadAbdullah54321 this issue is strictly related to fetching with HTTPS where the server is using a private or self-signed certificate. In this case, if you carefully follow my points you should resolve the issue.

It is very bad that meta is not even answering or even checking the issues. This should be clarified and be part of the official documentation.

+1
raffaeler on Oct 4, 2022

yeap… I was reading on Google and there are some problems with letsencrypt and old Android versions that I don’t fully understood.

Android ships a number of CAs that can only be updated with official security patches. If your CA was not shipped or updated at that time, of course it can’t work.

Do you think that the solution you gave of bundling the certificate will solve this problem (already tried without success), or it is something else and I just hijacked this discussion? 😅

Bundling the certificate is a good solution whenever you need to use Android in an enterprise environment that works with a private CA. In your case, you could try embedding the server certificate: exporting the CA (the one used by your letsencrypt certificate) from Windows in, converting with openssl, etc… Not sure if it can work, it’s not the scenario I described ad the beginning (and yes, you hijacked the thread 😅)

I’ll try to find a solution for this specific problem elsewhere. Thank you for your support 🙏

+1
nelsonprsousa on Jun 28, 2022

@nelsonprsousa if the certificate on the API side is publicly verifiable, you should not have this issue at all. My issue was about telling Android+React Native how to trust a private CA.

  1. double check that your cerificate is correctly deployed by browsing the API from a browser (I assume it is)
  2. verify the internal android error using adb logcat

Here’s my API (checking on Desktop Chrome): Screenshot 2022-06-28 at 13 04 39

I am assuming it is publicly verifiable.

However, on those Android versions (from API 22 to API 24), I have the “Network request failed” error.

I noticed that trying to directly open the website on Chrome on those old Android versions brings this error, it should be related:

Screenshot 2022-06-28 at 13 04 39

Certificate viewer:

So yeah, something weird on old Android version validating certificates?!

+1
nelsonprsousa on Jun 28, 2022

I have this problem connecting with my hosted API (with a valid SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt) on Android Level 21 (Android 5), 22 (Android 5.1), 23 (Android 6) and 24 (Android 7).

After trying both variant 1 and 2 without success, I gave up and removed support for these Android versions (represent like 5% of market share to this day).

No idea what’s happening, the error doesn’t help 😞

+1
nelsonprsousa on Jun 28, 2022

@raffaeler yeah i know, took me over 3 hours to solve this, good thing is you learned something new 😄

+1
hoaxvo16 on Feb 24, 2022
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