Making API requests to a server running in the local machine(localhost) is a
little tricky in React Native.
In iOS, it's quite simple, requesting http://localhost will directly connect
to the computers localhost. But if we try the same thing in Android it won't
work. The reason being that localhost/127.0.0.1 in Android points to the
device's localhost not the computers.
There are different ways to get around this.
Method 1 (recommended)
In Android, we can use the IP 10.0.2.2 to access computers localhost.
In a project, we can use the above logic to decide what baseUrl to use based
on the platform. Afterwards, we can use this baseUrl for all APIs.
Method 2
The second method is to stick with localhost itself and use the
React Native Debugger(RND)
to route the connection to the computers localhost. To do this, first, we have
to enable Debug Mode from the device debug menu and then we have to turn on
Network inspect from RND.
When using this approach there won't be any change in the code for Android. But
we always have to connect RND for this to work.