State of the

Leonardo Losoviz

Decoupled Days 2020

It's been exactly 1 year!

• 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?

See you again in

Decoupled Days 2022?

Thanks!

👋

Leonardo Losoviz

State of the