GraphQL in 7 days

This is the English version of my talk about how I went from MySQL DB to GraphQL API in PHP.

Transcript

1. How I went from MySQL DB to GraphQL API in 7 days Ricardo (Alco) Alcocer alco@ricardoalcocer.com · https://alco.rocks
2. - 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
3. Agenda - What is GraphQL? - A practical example - The server-side implementation in vanilla PHP - Live Demo
4. What problem is GraphQL attempting to solve?
5. 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
7. Facebook thought so too… https://techcrunch.com/2012/09/11/mark-zuckerberg-our-biggest-mistake-with-mobile-was-betting-too-much-on-html5
8. They noticed that the existing tools didn’t really solve their problem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=783ccP__No8
9. 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
10. Let’s look at a practical example
11. MEMBERS TABLE MESSAGES TABLE
12. MEMBERS TABLE MESSAGES TABLE
13. 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/….
14. 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": "alco@ricardoalcocer.com", "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 query{ members(first: 1000, skip: 0) { id fname lname email interests active joined } } { "data": { "members": [ { "id": 17, "fname": "Ricardo", "lname": "Alcocer", "email": "alco@ricardoalcocer.com", "interests": "lifehacking,music", "active": "1", "joined": "2021-07-14 12:51:57" }, { "id": 18, "fname": "Vic", REQUEST RESPONSE
16. 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": "alco@ricardoalcocer.com", "interests": "lifehacking,music", "active": "1", "joined": "2021-07-14 12:51:57" }, { "id": 18, "fname": "Vic", REQUEST RESPONSE 15
17. 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
18. 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
19. The server-side implementation
20. DATA MODELS
21. Main App Entry point index.php main.php
22. Main App Entry point index.php main.php
23. Main App Entry point index.php main.php
24. Main App Entry point index.php main.php
25. Objects.php
26. Objects.php
27. Objects.php
28. Query.php
29. Query.php
30. Mutation.php
31. Let’s look at a live demo!
33. 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
34. Thank you Questions? Comments? Find this code on Github https://github.com/ricardoalcocer/php_graphql