What GraphQL is About?

What Problems Can Be Solved by GraphQl and Why You Should Use It in Your Projects Immediately

New technologies never appear just like that. Any new technology is designed to solve problems of its author. If it doesn’t solve specific problems, then it is a bad technology and you shouldn’t pay attention to it.

Now I would like to tell you what problems can be solved by GraphQL and why you should use it in the projects immediately.

There is a problem of version control of different APIs in big projects. When one endpoint maintains several different clients directly, it has to give all data to each client because the endpoint doesn’t know the version of the client (actually, it doesn’t need to know!). As a result, a certain part of data is absolutely not necessary for the client.

As a solution, engineers have distinguished a certain API for each client. Thus the problem of unused data was solved. However, there was another, a more serious complication — the need to support different versions of API. GraphQL was urged to solve this problem.

Well, enough with prefaces, let’s move on to the most interesting — directly to GraphQL. It is time to clarify — what is it like!

GraphQL is a standard of the server and the client interaction. A GraphQL request is just a string that the server interprets and afterwards issues the response.

Here are the main features of GraphQL:

• The response format always corresponds to a request format. The client defines data that it wants to receive.
• The hierarchical structure of request and response. GraphQL is constructed so that it always follows connections between objects. Whereas classical REST service can demand the execution of several requests from you.
• GraphQL is strictly typified. It gives you a bigger control over data and allows to avoid excess errors.
• All version control is transferred to the client. You have a unified access point to the data in the backend.

As GraphQL isn’t a data storage, it is rather simple to implement it in an already existing system. That is it is rather easy to begin using it, at the same time without being afraid to affect other elements of the system — this is the bargaining chip of GraphQL. All you need for a start is just to describe the diagram of your data according to the standard and a method of how it can be received from your storage.

Thus, GraphQL is a powerful and simple tool for data transfer in your application. It allows you to be focused on the application, but not on better ways to build the backend for the application.

Conclusion

Certainly, everyone always wants to know whether some technology is perspective and is it worth spending time and efforts to master it. Well, you see!

GraphQL grows and develops every day. Stable implementations of the standard already exist for all popular programming languages. Some large companies (Facebook, Github, Coursera) are already using GraphQL in the production of software products.

The choice is yours! And if you need a professional review, just get in touch with us!

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