Apollo Client 1.0: A flexible, community-focused JavaScript GraphQL client • Hacker News Board

Re: Apollo Client 1.0: A flexible, community-focused JavaScript GraphQL client

#31

Post by eclypse » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 10:06 PM UTC

GraphQL and Apollo literally saved our app. Before we made the switch, we were plagued with issues from other providers such as technology stack compatibility issues, queries making issues and more.

We actually made the decision to switch to GraphQL 1.5 weeks prior to deadline and was able to get configuration and queries going in almost no time at all. I know I sound like a commercial right now but it seriously was very easy to setup and the querying learning curve was minimal.

The console is easy to use and the combination of the Playground with Mutation Callbacks helped me to setup and test my first AWS Lambda function of which I was able to do within 2 days and the AWS learning curve is not so easy to absorb.

Aside from all of this, the Graphcool team was very helpful and right there when we needed them whether on chat in the console or on Slack.

Re: Apollo Client 1.0: A flexible, community-focused JavaScript GraphQL client

#32

Post by paulddraper » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 10:08 PM UTC

treve wrote: post #9

jfaucett wrote: post #4

I've just started working on a graphql project now and from the frontend perspective its phenomenally better than a rest api. The backend side of things is also pretty simple so I'm really enjoying it. With Rest APIs there's always the problem (with numerous solutions) of how you select the particular fields and how you nest and or do not nest the resources in the api. With GraphQL this is more or less a non-issue -…

I'm kind of hoping that nesting resources becomes a non-issue in the future once HTTP/2 is widespread. Ideally you don't ever nest resources. With HTTP/2 the overhead of additional requests can be significantly lower, and you get the benefit of using client cache. This becomes pretty powerful once cache digests land, so a HTTP/2 REST service can just proactively push only the resources to the client that it has an (u…

HTTP/2 won't save you round-trips as you follow REST hypermedia links.

Re: Apollo Client 1.0: A flexible, community-focused JavaScript GraphQL client

#33

Post by daliwali » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 10:10 PM UTC

This is not a knock on Apollo in particular, but I am wholly underwhelmed by what gets hyped up in this industry. There isn't anything novel here. A new generation of programmers rediscovers Remote Procedure Call (they call them mutations), schemas (NoSQL was so last year), and various older concepts and rehashes it while putting down a strawman they claim is Representational State Transfer (which if they read the thesis, they would realize that their concerns are nitty gritty details which are only tangentially related to the architecture described).

Also the community-focused angle is disingenuous. It's backed by venture capital of the Meteor Development Group and based upon a single vendor specification, GraphQL by Facebook.

Re: Apollo Client 1.0: A flexible, community-focused JavaScript GraphQL client

#34

Post by sergiotapia » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 10:11 PM UTC

Rodeoclash wrote: post #24

Can anyone compare use of Relay + Apollo? I've used Relay extensively but never tried Apollo.

A nice birds-eye view comparison can be found here: https://stackshare.io/stackups/apollo-vs-relay

Re: Apollo Client 1.0: A flexible, community-focused JavaScript GraphQL client

#35

Post by generalledger » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 10:12 PM UTC

sergiotapia wrote: post #17

Can we use Apollo with Meteor seamlessly now. Meaning is it production-ready to use? I like Meteor's reactivity so so much.

I am wondering the same thing. I believe they wanted to appeal to the broader JS community first, then build in reactivity to Meteor. That is the only reason why I haven't picked it up yet.

Re: Apollo Client 1.0: A flexible, community-focused JavaScript GraphQL client

#36

Post by jives » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 10:23 PM UTC

pedalpete wrote: post #29

I'm about to start re-writing an api as GraphQL, I'm looking at the comments of support for Apollo, and looking at their webpage, but I'm failing to see what the real benefit is. What is the problem with GraphQL that they are addressing?

Apollo Client doesn't solve problems with GraphQL, it provides a client for GraphQL.

Re: Apollo Client 1.0: A flexible, community-focused JavaScript GraphQL client

#37

Post by igl » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 10:24 PM UTC

pedalpete wrote: post #29

I'm about to start re-writing an api as GraphQL, I'm looking at the comments of support for Apollo, and looking at their webpage, but I'm failing to see what the real benefit is. What is the problem with GraphQL that they are addressing?

My favorites are the collection of functions offered by the graphql-tools package. Like composing your schema from strings instead of the verbose JSON definition. The mocking is also neat.

Apollo is really just a tool-box of a lot neat little things that you can put together or omit. Check out their other packages beside apollo-client.

Re: Apollo Client 1.0: A flexible, community-focused JavaScript GraphQL client

#38

Post by bostonvaulter2 » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 10:35 PM UTC

jbradleybarnes wrote: post #21

I love graphQL and Apollo's React work flow that mimics Redux's HOCs. The addition of it probably increased the maintanablity of my apps 5x. Added bonus, I found a backend as a service that that works perfectly with Apollo. Graphcool has increased the maintainability of my app ten fold. I no longer mess with writing my own reducers for the backend. The Graphcool community is also great; they are very helpful on slack…

This almost sounds like an advertisement.

Re: Apollo Client 1.0: A flexible, community-focused JavaScript GraphQL client

#39

Post by pmalynin » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 10:58 PM UTC

Awesome,

Shameless plug we just released our app today that would not be possible if it weren't for Apollo.

If you're interested in exploring fashion, check out Nelo on the app store:

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/nelo-shop-tv-fashion-and-dre...

Re: Apollo Client 1.0: A flexible, community-focused JavaScript GraphQL client

#40

Post by andrewingram » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 11:16 PM UTC

linkmotif wrote: post #26

Rodeoclash wrote: post #24

Can anyone compare use of Relay + Apollo? I've used Relay extensively but never tried Apollo.

+1. If anyone has tried both, please share your experience!

Relay has some nicer ergonomics when it comes to composing queries from fragments for different components, and the mutation behaviour is a bit more "magic", but both of these benefits come with some serious restrictions on what you can do. The next version of Relay looks like it'll do away with this approach, bringing it closer in line with how Apollo does things right now.

I'm a heavy user of Relay (been using it since it was first open-sourced around 18 months ago), but given that it's going to be changing quite a bit in the near future, I think newcomers to GraphQL are going to be better off with Apollo for now.