GraphQL: The next evolution for Web APIs?

REST has become the de-facto standard for web APIs. However the constraints imposed by the standard sometimes make it hard to work with. What if you want to get a list of all posts written by a user and all friends of that user that liked the post? In REST this means hitting at least 4 different API endpoints. In GraphQL, a new approach to interacting with an API, this same operation could be done with only one request! In this webinar we will go over the general structure of GraphQL, key differences to REST and then look at a client-server example implementation to see hands-on how the same use case looks like in REST and GraphQL.

Transcript

1. Marcel Neidinger Associate Solutions Engineer 16/06/2020 The next evolution for Web APIs? GraphQL
2. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential graphql { old_times what how why examples }
3. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential old_times
4. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
5. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential Kid, let me take you back to 2019 …
6. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential … when we could still travel …
7. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential … and used REST to do API interactions
8. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential Webex API GET /api/v1/people/me HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2019 03:59:02 GMT Content-Type: application/json { “id”: “Y2lzY29zcGFyazovL3VzLA”, ”emails”: [ “mneiding@cisco.com” } } Header Body Location Method Identifier
9. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential /api/subreddit/ /api/user/ /api/user/ /api/user/ /api/subreddit/<name>/posts /api/post/<post>/comments/ /api/post/<post>/comments/ /api/post/<post>/comments/
10. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential What changed then?
11. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential We added more and more of these
12. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential And forgot to add these
13. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential we are relationship- driven
14. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential and so is our data
15. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential under-fetching The process of being unable to fetch all data required in a single request.
16. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential over-fetching The process of getting unnecessary information when querying a API endpoint.
17. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential SELECT (name, joke) FROM presentation WHERE level > 1 0 Rows returned
18. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential what
19. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential GraphQL is a query language for APIs and a runtime for fulfilling those queries with your existing data.
20. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 2012 Dev at fb
21. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 2012 Dev at fb
22. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 2012 Dev at fb 2015 Open Source
23. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 2012 Dev at fb 2015 Open Source
24. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 2012 Dev at fb 2015 Open Source 2018 GraphQL Foundation
25. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 2012 Dev at fb 2015 Open Source 2018 GraphQL Foundation
26. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 2012 Dev at fb 2015 Open Source 2018 GraphQL Foundation Now Significant Adoption
27. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential GraphQL is a query language for APIs and a runtime for fulfilling those queries with your existing data.
28. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
29. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
30. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
31. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential how
32. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential Schema Get Change Listen
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34. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubReddit{ name: String! title: String! }
35. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubReddit{ name: String! title: String! }
36. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubReddit{ name: String! title: String! }
37. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubReddit{ name: String! title: String! }
38. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubReddit{ name: String! title: String! }
39. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubReddit{ name: String! title: String! }
40. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubReddit{ name: String! title: String! hotListings(limit: Int):[RedditLink]! }
41. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubReddit{ name: String! title: String! hotListings(limit: Int):[RedditLink]! }
42. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubReddit{ name: String! title: String! hotListings(limit: Int):[RedditLink]! }
43. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubReddit{ name: String! title: String! hotListings(limit: Int):[RedditLink]! }
44. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential Get
45. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubRedditQueries{ search(q: String): [SubReddit] getSubReddit(uuid: Id): SubReddit }
46. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubRedditQueries{ search(q: String): [SubReddit] getSubReddit(uuid: Id): SubReddit }
47. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubRedditQueries{ search(q: String): [SubReddit] getSubReddit(uuid: Id): SubReddit }
48. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubRedditQueries{ search(q: String): [SubReddit] getSubReddit(uuid: Id): SubReddit }
49. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential example
50. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential Change
51. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubredditMutations{ addLike(num: Int): SubReddit }
52. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubredditMutations{ addLike(num: Int): SubReddit }
53. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential addLike(num: 1) { name title }
54. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential Listen
55. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubredditSubscriptions { onSubscriber(name: str): Subscriber }
56. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential { “id”: “…” “name”: “…” } { “id”: “…” “name”: “…” }
57. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential Still … how?
58. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential schema { query: SubRedditQueries mutation: SubredditMutations subscription: SubredditSubscriptions }
59. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubRedditQueries{ getSubReddit(uuid: Id): SubReddit }
60. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubRedditQueries{ getSubReddit(uuid: Id): SubReddit }
61. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubRedditQueries{ getSubReddit(uuid: Id): SubReddit } SubRedditResolver
62. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubRedditQueries{ getSubReddit(uuid: Id): SubReddit } type SubReddit{ name: String! title: String! hotListings(limit: Int):[RedditLink]! } SubRedditResolver
63. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential type SubRedditQueries{ getSubReddit(uuid: Id): SubReddit } type SubReddit{ name: String! title: String! hotListings(limit: Int):[RedditLink]! } SubRedditResolver RedditLinkResolver
64. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential why
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67. © 2019 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential • List of GraphQL APIs: https://github.com/APIs-guru/graphql-apis • Online Playground for GraphQL: https://www.graphqlhub.com/playground • Step-by-Step Guide on GraphQL: https://www.howtographql.com/ Useful Resources