How I went from MySQL DB to GraphQL API in 7 days Ricardo (Alco) Alcocer [email protected] · https://alco.rocks 

- Originally from Puerto Rico 󰐦 - Building technology solutions for over 25 years - 4x Founder - Former Director of Developer Relations for Contentful - Former Director of Developer Relations and Training for Appcelerator (now tidev.io) - Author of 4.5 books - Curious Computer Scientist always looking for challenges and opportunities to bring value - Instrumental Guitarist 🎸 (https://alco.ws/spotify) Hi there! I’m Alco 

Agenda - What is GraphQL? - A practical example - The server-side implementation in vanilla PHP - Live Demo 

What problem is GraphQL attempting to solve? 

RESTful always feels like the first option for APIs - Mature - It’s an architectural style - Based on functionality of the HTTP Protocol - Stateless - Uses HTTP Verbs to define actions (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) - It was designed to solve the problem of accessing data resources - REST came to replace technologies like S.O.A.P. and others 

No content

Facebook thought so too… https://techcrunch.com/2012/09/11/mark-zuckerberg-our-biggest-mistake-with-mobile-was-betting-too-much-on-html5 

They noticed that the existing tools didn’t really solve their problem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=783ccP__No8 

They created GraphQL, a query language for APIs - It’s not a product or a technology, it is a technical specification - Creates a new paradigm for having conversations with your data sources - It offers libraries for virtually any programming language - While REST was designed to solve the “server” problem, GraphQL was designed to solve the problem of who is consuming the data resources - A single request can handle multiple operations - It is self-documenting - It is divided into two main areas: - The GraphQL Server - Implements data definitions, ORMs, data relationships, etc. - The GraphQL Client - Allows for a rich JSON-like language for building requests that return predictable result sets 

Let’s look at a practical example 

MEMBERS TABLE MESSAGES TABLE 

MEMBERS TABLE MESSAGES TABLE 

In REST-land GET https://api.somedomain.com/v1/members GET https://api.somedomain.com/v1/member/12345 GET https://api.somedomain.com/v1/messages GET https://api.somedomain.com/v1/messages/12345 ENDPOINTS DEFINED BEFOREHAND POST https://api.somedomain.com/v1/…. PUT https://api.somedomain.com/v1/…. DELETE https://api.somedomain.com/v1/…. 

In GraphQL-land POST https://api.somedomain.com/gql There’s only ONE endpoint query{ members(first: 1000, skip: 0) { id fname lname email interests active joined } } { "data": { "members": [ { "id": 17, "fname": "Ricardo", "lname": "Alcocer", "email": "[email protected]", "interests": "lifehacking,music", "active": "1", "joined": "2021-07-14 12:51:57" }, { "id": 18, "fname": "Vic", REQUEST RESPONSE 

In GraphQL-land POST https://api.somedomain.com/gql There’s only ONE endpoint query{ members(first: 1000, skip: 0) { id fname lname email interests active joined } } { "data": { "members": [ { "id": 17, "fname": "Ricardo", "lname": "Alcocer", "email": "[email protected]", "interests": "lifehacking,music", "active": "1", "joined": "2021-07-14 12:51:57" }, { "id": 18, "fname": "Vic", REQUEST RESPONSE 

In GraphQL-land POST https://api.somedomain.com/gql There’s only ONE endpoint query{ members(first: 1000, skip: 0) { id fname lname email interests active joined } } { "data": { "members": [ { "id": 17, "fname": "Ricardo", "lname": "Alcocer", "email": "[email protected]", "interests": "lifehacking,music", "active": "1", "joined": "2021-07-14 12:51:57" }, { "id": 18, "fname": "Vic", REQUEST RESPONSE 15 

In GraphQL-land POST https://api.somedomain.com/gql There’s only ONE endpoint mutation{ editMember(id: 2508 active:0){ id } } { "data": { "editMember": { "id": 2508 } } } REQUEST RESPONSE 

In GraphQL-land POST https://api.somedomain.com/gql There’s only ONE endpoint mutation{ editMember(id: 2508 active:0){ id } } { "data": { "editMember": { "id": 2508 } } } REQUEST RESPONSE 

The server-side implementation 

DATA MODELS 

Main App Entry point index.php main.php 

Main App Entry point index.php main.php 

Main App Entry point index.php main.php 

Main App Entry point index.php main.php 

Objects.php 

Objects.php 

Objects.php 

Query.php 

Query.php 

Mutation.php 

Let’s look at a live demo! 

No content

Summary - It is a Query Language for your API - It’s not a technology, it’s a specification - Offers client and server libraries for multiple languages - It’s Database-agnostic - Designed for client-side flexibility - Optimized for Mobile use 

Thank you Questions? Comments? Find this code on Github https://github.com/ricardoalcocer/php_graphql