State of the

Leonardo Losoviz

Decoupled Days 2020

It's been exactly 1 year!

How is the project doing?

  • How ready is it?
  • Has it added new features?
  • Has it managed to get a user base?
  • Contributors to the repo?
  • Financial stability?

In terms of...

Let's find out

How ready is it?

  • Current version: 0.7 (Feb 2021)
  • Launching new version 0.8 next week! (Support for WP 5.8)
  • Launched website graphql-api.com (nice domain!)
  • Moved source code to leoloso/PoP (monorepo)
  • The plugin is super ready
  • The plugin is never ready
  • Plan to release version 1.0 in (hopefully) 3 months
  • Then, release on wp.org/plugins

Has it added new features?

  • Feature-wise, it already has what it needs
  • (Persisted queries, custom endpoints, access control, HTTP caching, public/private access mode)
  • But, does it actually matter?
  • People seem to be mainly using it to power Gatsby
  • And Gatsby doesn't care about all these features!
  • So I'm currently working on completing the WP schema...
  • v0.7 still rather incomplete (no categories, settings, menus)
  • v0.8 will complete most of what's missing

Has it managed to get a user base?

  • Nothing significant yet
  • Why? I believe it is because...
  • - it can't be extended yet
  • - it's not available on wp.org
  • - Gatsby users don't need it
  • - commercial interests are too invested on WPGraphQL
  • So gotta wait for v1.0, and see how it goes

Contributors to the repo?

  • Nops
  • The codebase has been refactored a few times, up to v0.8...
  • ...and still a bit more to do, up to v1.0
  • No guides on extending the schema yet
  • Stuck in between WordPress and PHP
  • - Scary to non-advanced developers (service containers, PHP transpiling, CMS-agnosticism, scoping)
  • - Can't talk much about it in reddit's /r/php <= They hate WP!
  • So I'm working on it all by myself
  • After v1.0, with plugin being extensible, and guides completed, will hopefully get better (🤞)

Financials

  • Financials? What's that?
  • With open source? It. Just. Does. Not. Work.
  • (At least for me... and I believe 99% of everyone else)
  • At u$d 5/month, I'd need hundreds of individual sponsors to make it work out (that's impossible for me to achieve!)
  • So I attempted to get a few corporate sponsors
  • I proposed to drive traffic to them via my blog (which managed to have a few 1000s visitors) in exchange for the sponsorship
  • They express interest... then they don't reply your email anymore, and keep you waiting forever
  • Consequence? From now on, no more full open source
  • Will launch GraphQL API PRO with lovely features, and a marketplace of extensions
  • Persisted queries/etc will remain in GraphQL API though, but all new developments will go to PRO (🤫)

Conclusion?

No conclusion

Life goes on

Everything takes time

There are no shortcuts

See you again in

Decoupled Days 2022?

(hopefully offline!)

😃

Thanks!

👋

Leonardo Losoviz

State of the

State of the GraphQL API for WordPress

By Leonardo Losoviz

State of the GraphQL API for WordPress

It's been exactly one year since launching the GraphQL API for WordPress plugin on Decoupled Days 2020. So, how has it been doing?

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