Learn what GraphQL is all about and how it solves some of the problems with the REST architecture.

Table of Contents

• Representational State Transfer (REST)
  • Can we reduce the number of API calls?
• Why Facebook built GraphQL
• GraphQL Type System
  • Scalar Types in GraphQL
  • Enumeration Type
  • Object Types
  • Lists in GraphQL Schema
• Exploring GraphiQL
• Conclusion

This tutorial is the first part of the series on Exploring GraphQL. In this part, we will look into the old ways of fetching resources from the server using SOAP and REST and examine the problems with these approaches. We will see why Facebook felt the need for building GraphQL while developing the News Feed section for their IOS application. We will learn how GraphQL solves some of the common problems of the REST architecture. We will then dive deep into the Type System adopted by the GraphQL specification.

The World Wide Web was invented in the early 90s. It was just a pile of HTML pages back then. But the idea that a resource can be transferred over the wires from a server to the client was amazing! There was a lot of enthusiasm among people to try out this new feature. As people started experimenting with the web, they wanted to do a lot more new things than just browsing over the static pages. The animations, scripting, and graphics were improved to have a better experience. Over time, the web revolutionized and is now the largest platform in the history of computing, around 5 billion devices are connected to the web.

Initially, the resource fetching mechanism was implemented using SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). It is a messaging protocol specification for exchanging structured data in the form of XML Information Set. It uses HTTP or SMTP as the application layer protocols for transferring the messages across web services. SOAP was doing great and was being used in some of the major projects. However, SOAP did not perform well for low-memory and low-processing-power devices with limited bandwidth. There was a need to build for something better!

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