Introduction to Apollo GraphQL

Frontend Developer in:

Przemek Fałowski

Who am I?

@przemkow

@przemkow

przemyslaw.falowski

Movies

Directors

Actors

REST?

Movies

/movies

Directors

/directors/:id

Actors

/actors/:id

Solution?

Query params!

/movies?include=

directors,

actors

đź‘Ź

GraphQL

What is GraphQL?

  • A query language for API
  • Schema definition language 
  • Release as a specification

What isn't?

  • Not a Database or ORM
  • Not a language specific tool

CRUD

GraphQL

GET /posts

POST /posts

DELETE /posts/:id

PATCH /posts/:id

...

 

HTTP status codes:

- 200 Success

- 403 Forbidden

...

POST /graphql

200 Success

Query

Response

Apollo GraphQL

 

What is Apollo GraphQL?

Set of libraries which implement both a GraphQL server and client

Example time!

https://github.com/przemkow/microblog-example

Apollo Server

Schema

Resolver

Schema

Resolver

Schema

Resolver

Apollo Client

How to start?

1. Install react-apollo

2. Setup apollo client

3. Connect to your react app

So is only about a different way to fetch data from API?

🤔

JSON

Database

Apollo Cache

  • Same path, same object

  • Same identifier, same object

Apollo client is a declarative approach to data fetching 

Redux

  • Component needs data

  • Dispatch Action

  • API Call
  • Parse response
  • Update Store
  • Send data to the component

Apollo

  • Component needs data

  • Write Query with required data

fetchPolicy:

  • cache-first (default)
  • cache-and-network
  • network-only
  • cache-only
  • no-cache​

refetchQueries

manual cache update

HTTP batching

Batch multiple operations into a single HTTP request

Example: http-batching  branch

Optimistic UI

Example: optimistic-ui  branch

Developer Experience

Developer Experience

Support:
swift | typescript | flow | scala

Example: apollo-tooling

With a great tool...

comes new problems

Problem:

Solution:

HTTP caching

Client side cache

N +1 problem

Using deferred resolver

ex. facebook/dataloader

Malicious queries

Timeout

Limit query depth

Define max query complexity

Introduction to Apollo GraphQL

By Przemysław Fałowski

Introduction to Apollo GraphQL

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