Thoughts on GraphQL and Apollo?

[Babsvik]

Hi Kent!

Any thoughts on GraphQL in general and ApolloGraphQL?

I have been playing around with building ideas I have using Apollo GraphQL.
Recently I also started using other Apollo features like the apollo-link-state for local state management in React.

I really feel like it's a great dev experience using React + NodeJS + GraphQL.

It also feels like the "use case" of the GraphQL as an API makes the frontend and backend more cleanly separated, making it more flexible changing the frontend. Meaning it feels like you can iterate more without necessarily changing the backend.

Is this just great, or am I missing something?

Any insight/thoughts/pros/cons is greatly appreciated!

non issue related personal thanks:

I have really appreciated "DevTips with Kent" streams on youtube lately, great work!
Been tuning in whenever I have the chance.

Also bought and it's on my todo list to complete your course on Javascript testing.

Keep being awesome!
Both on human level and the contributions you do to tech!

Cheers
/JB

[kentcdodds]

Hi @Babsvik!

Here's your answer: #78

[kentcdodds]

I'm experimenting with automatic transcriptions with Trint. I'm pretty impressed by it!

Here's what I said in the podcast:

[00:00:00] What does up everybody today is January 23. It's a Wednesday. And the snow is starting to melt. We are going to be talking about question number five hundred forty seven. Thoughts on graft GraphQL and Apollo. This is from somebody named John bebb. Sorry should have practiced that before. And there are questions about graft you on Apollo. They say that they've been building stuff with GraphQL on Apollo and they really liked it. apollo-link-state for local state management and react and a bunch of stuff to feel like it's a really good way to separate the front end from the back end to have it more flexible on the front and you can make changes really quickly without having to necessarily go to the back end to make some changes. And they're just wondering like what my thoughts are about that and if they're missing something. Pros and cons. So I'll preface this first by saying I have not used Apollo at all. I have definitely used GraphQL a little bit and the I've used. What is it called a graphql-request I think is the package graphql-request on npm and I use that because it's small. So yeah I don't really typically. I haven't had a real use case for something like Appollo which is actually very large. So what are my thoughts. [00:01:24][84.0]

[00:01:25] I think that's probably the biggest thing Apollo and GraphQL client-side libraries are enormous typically mostly to handle caching and the merging of GraphQL queries and stuff like that and so it would... I'd Have to really be doing a lot of GraphQL queries and stuff for it to justify the size. But other than that I am super super gung ho about GraphQL and I'm really excited about the opportunities that we have for building front ends that are totally separated from the back and I feel like that's the right architecture for most apps. Now if you're building an app that is really SEO like super super important with SEO or something it's not logged in or whatever then I would strongly recommend Gatsby. In which case you can still use GraphQL and things but it has the server rendering aspect and even if it's SEO is not a huge concern then Gatsby is still probably a really awesome bet. I'm really excited about Gatsby. And there are only a few cases where Gatsby probably isn't enough. So yeah. GraphQL. It's awesome. Separating in front end from the back end super super great. Yeah I'm really excited about that. It's something that we're investigating heavily at PayPal as well. And yeah thank you so much for the question. And I will be in your ears tomorrow. Goodbye. [00:01:25][0.0]
[84.0]