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Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

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Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#51

Post by burtonator »

I did a huge heads down on GraphQL vs AppSync vs Firebase for an app I'm building around document collaboration, annotation and sync for people working with PDFs and web content (https://getpolarized.io/) - it's kind of like an offline web browser.... anyway.

GraphQL is super awesome at what it does but it's definitely not designed for rapid prototyping applications.

The thing about GraphQL is that it's middleware. It's designed to act as really nice glue between multiple backends.

It solves a lot of nice problems like over-fetching too much data, calling too many APIs, etc.

The problem is that you really don't need these to get an app shipped immediately.

The REAL sweet spot for GraphQL is for a company like Netflix or Facebook where you have 1500 APIs and tons of problems with data over-fetch and you have the time to sit down and do things right.

I think I'm going to end up going with Firebase just because you can bang something out FAST and get it shipped.

It's not going to be perfect but you can ship an MVP and start making revenue and/or grow your user base while you figure things out.

Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#52

Post by adamnemecek »

burtonator wrote: post #51

I did a huge heads down on GraphQL vs AppSync vs Firebase for an app I'm building around document collaboration, annotation and sync for people working with PDFs and web content ( https://getpolarized.io/ ) - it's kind of like an offline web browser.... anyway. GraphQL is super awesome at what it does but it's definitely not designed for rapid prototyping applications. The thing about GraphQL is that it's middleware.…

I think it’s dope if you are fundamentally querying a graph. Doing it manually is repetitive.

Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#53

Post by tjpnz »

halostatue wrote: post #41
degyves wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think GraphQL is just an way to bully the efforts of the W3C to standardize web technologies. It not just is non-standard, also is breaks any advantage of the HATEOAS principle.

I have written HATEOAS APIs (not just “RESTish” APIs). I prefer writing GraphQL APIs by far. If I have to write something that’s REST-ish, I’ll do my damnedest to make sure it’s HATEOAS, but in my experience, the number of developers who can consistently produce useful and consistent HATEOAS APIs is…vanishingly small. I can learn more about an API from its GraphQL schema than most of the other API documentation (like…

>the number of developers who can consistently produce useful and consistent HATEOAS APIs is…vanishingly small.

Because relatively few developers truly understand HATEOAS let alone REST. I think that did play a small part in the increased popularity of GraphQL.

Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#54

Post by alwaysreading »

burtonator wrote: post #51

I did a huge heads down on GraphQL vs AppSync vs Firebase for an app I'm building around document collaboration, annotation and sync for people working with PDFs and web content ( https://getpolarized.io/ ) - it's kind of like an offline web browser.... anyway. GraphQL is super awesome at what it does but it's definitely not designed for rapid prototyping applications. The thing about GraphQL is that it's middleware.…

Totally agree. GraphQL makes perfect sense for a large app with many endpoints but there isn’t a lot of benefit for smaller apps. I’m involved in an app now that “has to use GraphQL” but could easily be done with a restful api without the additional overhead of what is essentially middleware.

Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#55

Post by baby »

burtonator wrote: post #51

I did a huge heads down on GraphQL vs AppSync vs Firebase for an app I'm building around document collaboration, annotation and sync for people working with PDFs and web content ( https://getpolarized.io/ ) - it's kind of like an offline web browser.... anyway. GraphQL is super awesome at what it does but it's definitely not designed for rapid prototyping applications. The thing about GraphQL is that it's middleware.…

Agree with you, for small apps it looks like this is a lot of effort for little benefits. For large companies that deal with huge APIs, maybe it's good.

Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#56

Post by jchb »

burtonator wrote: post #51

I did a huge heads down on GraphQL vs AppSync vs Firebase for an app I'm building around document collaboration, annotation and sync for people working with PDFs and web content ( https://getpolarized.io/ ) - it's kind of like an offline web browser.... anyway. GraphQL is super awesome at what it does but it's definitely not designed for rapid prototyping applications. The thing about GraphQL is that it's middleware.…

> tons of problems with data over-fetch

What is the GraphGL story on caching and closest point of presence redirection? We build a mobile app that consumes various "enterprisy" HTTP-based APIs. Often, due to how the APIs are designed to support a range of different frontends, we have to either fetch more data than we need, or do a bunch of granular requests where we would prefer to do a single large one. But most of the time that is outweighed by the fact that many responses are cached in CDN (Content Delivery Network). Since our users are spread out globally, going to the origin server for every response would in many cases imply a latency of 100-200 milliseconds, which wouldn't be acceptable.

Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#57

Post by Meic »

degyves wrote: post #31
rboyd wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's awesome -- y'all are like the tech version of the Mad Max War Boys. sacrificed yourselves betting on the wrong tech. witness me!

Can you elaborate why SPARQL is the wrong tech?

I never met a SPARQL endpoint I couldn't crash with a trivial query.

Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#58

Post by true_religion »

degyves wrote: post #39
i_phish_cats wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn't, it is agnostic. There's an adapter for every major database out there. Oh, yeah, graphql also has momentum and strong adoption, unlike SPARQL.

Oh yeah, GraphQL is backed by Facebook (may that be a hint of its momentum, like its support for React?) , unlike SPARQL which is a _standard_. You can also convert from PostgreSQL, MySQL, DB/2 and others to SPARQL. Still, only difference seems 1. Facebook pushing its non-standardized tech around and 2. Losing any benefits from HATEOAS from the usage of GraphQL.

Sure but I use GraphQL as middleware when fetching from elasticsearch, or redis, or flat files. It is not something you hook up directly to your database, it's a way to help define an api for your application.

Most of the time, in my app, resource names do not even correspond to single tables or backend data structures but are simply presented that way for ease of use for external consumers.

Subjectively, Implementing it feels more like old school COBRA than REST or SQL.

Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#59

Post by cheriot »

burtonator wrote: post #51

I did a huge heads down on GraphQL vs AppSync vs Firebase for an app I'm building around document collaboration, annotation and sync for people working with PDFs and web content ( https://getpolarized.io/ ) - it's kind of like an offline web browser.... anyway. GraphQL is super awesome at what it does but it's definitely not designed for rapid prototyping applications. The thing about GraphQL is that it's middleware.…

GraphQL shifts complexity to the server instead of the client. That can be an advantage when there's multiple clients or just one client iterating faster than the underlying logic. There's certainly a short term cost to GraphQL compared to REST, but there's a lot of use cases with positive ROI outside FANGs.

When read and write becomes real time sync, though, I've always thought Firebase was under appreciated.

Re: Facebook’s GraphQL gets its own open-source foundation

#60

Post by krschultz »

chrisweekly wrote: post #37
krschultz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GraphQL isn't a system per-say, it's a spec and many tools around it. Putting the spec in a foundation (with a few of those tools) gives the entire community certainty about the direction of the project. Hopefully that spurs more people outside of FB to commit to GraphQL. The existence of the foundation is orthogonal to FB's internal investment and usage of GraphQL, which was and will continue to be significant.

>"per-say" -> "per se" Right pronunciation, but it's Latin. :)

Thanks! At least I learned something today.
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