SDK & Export API

Client Configuration

Last updated June 4, 2026

Client Configuration

You create a client with createClient(config). It returns a RankHikerClient.

import { createClient } from '@rankhiker/sdk';
const rh = createClient({ apiKey: process.env.RANKHIKER_API_KEY! });

Config options

Option	Type	Default	Notes
`apiKey`	`string`	(required)	Your `rh_export_...` key. Throws a `RankHikerError` if missing or empty.
`baseUrl`	`string`	`https://rankhiker.com`	API host. Trailing slashes are stripped. The default works in the browser too; do not use the `www` host (it redirects and can drop the key header).
`fetch`	`typeof fetch`	global `fetch`	Custom fetch implementation: legacy Node, a proxy, or a caching layer.
`requestInit`	`RequestInit`	`{}`	Merged into every request. Useful for Next.js cache hints.

The client exposes one public readonly property, client.baseUrl, holding the resolved host.

baseUrl override and staging

// Point at a staging host
const staging = createClient({
  apiKey: process.env.RANKHIKER_API_KEY!,
  baseUrl: 'https://staging.rankhiker.com',
});

Custom fetch (proxy or cache)

Provide your own fetch to route requests through a proxy, add caching, or supply a polyfill on older Node runtimes:

import { createClient } from '@rankhiker/sdk';
import nodeFetch from 'node-fetch';
const rh = createClient({
  apiKey: process.env.RANKHIKER_API_KEY!,
  fetch: nodeFetch as unknown as typeof fetch,
});

requestInit for Next.js caching

requestInit is spread into every underlying request, so you can apply Next.js fetch cache directives globally.

Incremental Static Regeneration (revalidate every 5 minutes):

const rh = createClient({
  apiKey: process.env.RANKHIKER_API_KEY!,
  requestInit: { next: { revalidate: 300 } },
});

Always fetch fresh (no caching):

const rh = createClient({
  apiKey: process.env.RANKHIKER_API_KEY!,
  requestInit: { cache: 'no-store' },
});

Any other RequestInit field works too (custom headers, signals, and so on). Note that the SDK always sets the request method to GET and adds the X-API-Key and Accept headers, so those are not overridable through requestInit.

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