Articles
Shopify is all in on GraphQL, they made their GraphQL API the definitive API for all things Shopify and marked their REST API as legacy. If you're interested in why they made that decision and what's next, make sure to read the article!
In "Exploring GraphQL: Benefits, Comparisons, and Other API Protocols" by Haridas Kanure, the author compares GraphQL with other API protocols like RESTful APIs and gRPC. The article highlights the key benefits of using GraphQL, including: strongly typed queries for better error handling, the ability to fetch multiple related resources in a single request, and support for real-time updates through subscriptions The author also discusses the advantages of GraphQL over traditional RESTful APIs, such as reduced latency and improved query flexibility. Additionally, Kanure provides an overview of gRPC, a high-performance RPC framework, highlighting its strengths in terms of performance and scalability. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of choosing the right API protocol for specific use cases, depending on factors like data complexity, traffic volume, and development constraints.
Events
Come and join the London GraphQL community for the Autumn edition of London GraphQL; Two or three talks on the most up-to-date GraphQL topics interspersed with pizza and networking, and a casual get together afterwards at a local pub. Talks include Navigating the GraphQL Galaxy: American Express's Journey to a Federated Model by Stefano Cislaghi from American Express and ncreasing Velocity with GraphQL and PostgreSQL, by Benjie Gillam from Graphile.
Tools & Open Source
Orbit GraphQL is an early-stage GraphQL Cache similar to Stellate. You can deploy it in front of your GraphQL APIs, and it will start caching your responses based on your configuration, including automatic invalidation and similar features. It is still early in its development journey, but it is certainly worthwhile to keep an eye on.
Videos
In this talk, Sabrina discusses how Meta has developed client-side pagination frameworks on top of the Relay GraphQL connection specification to make paginating with GraphQL-backed data simpler for product engineers. Specifically, she will cover: - Cursor-based pagination + the Relay GraphQL Connection specification - Generating pagination queries for a given Connection field - Client-side Connection field state management - How Meta integrates their pagination frameworks with their UI frameworks.
WebAssembly is reshaping our approach to software execution units and components. With its ecosystem maturing--the ability to deploy with multiple cloud providers, the standardization of WebAssembly Components, and the rise of WASI--its potential is fast becoming a reality. WebAssembly is especially suitable for running server-side code at the edge, where resource constraints and security concerns are paramount. To realize the full potential of running API servers at the edge--lowered latency, reduced costs, and improved scalability--we must rethink our approach to building and deploying servers. GraphQL is particularly well-suited for edge deployments. It not only reduces the number of trips between the client and the server but also allows implementations to optimize the whole query to reduce round trips to the data server. In this session, we will explore how to target a Rust implementation of GraphQL server to WebAssembly. We'll also look into how this fits within the WebAssembly ecosystem and how you can run these servers even in your browser.
