Ask HN: For a greenfield public API which to use: REST, GraphQL, other? Why?

#1

Post by davidwells » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 7:46 PM UTC

Context: This product is building built with the idea in mind that other developers will build new and interesting things with the API exposed to them

Re: Ask HN: For a greenfield public API which to use: REST, GraphQL, other? Why?

#2

Post by itamarst » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 8:07 PM UTC

Depends on your use case.

GraphQL is designed for the use case of a client talking over a thin long pipe that needs to talk to many APIs. As in, it's designed for API clients that are smartphones.

And there are patent licensing issues with GraphQL.

Re: Ask HN: For a greenfield public API which to use: REST, GraphQL, other? Why?

#3

Post by schickling » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 8:29 PM UTC

Definitely GraphQL. Github, Shopify, Yelp and many more are now using GraphQL as their primary public API.

Re: Ask HN: For a greenfield public API which to use: REST, GraphQL, other? Why?

#4

Post by davidwells » Wed, Sep 20, 2017, 9:14 PM UTC

schickling wrote: post #3

Definitely GraphQL. Github, Shopify, Yelp and many more are now using GraphQL as their primary public API.

Do you any any examples of a company having ONLY a graphQL API for public use?

Re: Ask HN: For a greenfield public API which to use: REST, GraphQL, other? Why?

#5

Post by PaulHoule » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 1:37 PM UTC

It would help us answer the question if you told us more about your application.

Re: Ask HN: For a greenfield public API which to use: REST, GraphQL, other? Why?

#6

Post by vasilakisfil » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 9:29 PM UTC

You can use Introspected REST (https://introspected.rest) that allows you to fine-tune and balance between REST and GraphQL. No available libraries at the moment that can help you though so this could be a problem for your use case ;)