What Is GraphQL?

[@Hajjat]

@9:47 it would have helped a lot if you showed us the backend logic before jumping into GraphQL queries. Still unsure how the storage layer and backend logic glues with GraphQL. Great video nonetheless!

[@howtosaywhattosay]

I was thinking exactly this!

[@a_sandrina_p]

I'm working on a "small" personal App from Backend to Frontend, and one of the technologies will be GraphQL. Thanks for your tutorials!

[@vizzyphd]

Sandrina Pereira what's your Github?

[@a_sandrina_p]

There you go: github.com/sandrina-p/

[@Sefree6]

I've been meaning to learn what GraphQL is for a while now, it turns out it only takes 10 minutes to get a good idea of it! Thanks for the tutorial :-)

[@artemu78]

thanks buddy, 15 minutes and i got the idea, great!

[@thanhvanngo6563]

so touching for an excellent video

[@tomaszgiba]

I really like the part where you can pull a list of records AND define what data of those records you also want, in one call.

[@syntaxfm]

It's really the best

[@bongskeeh]

Tomasz Giba gy79ii999

[@bongskeeh]

Tomasz Giba mly5

[@shrutikapoor08]

Great explanation Scott!

[@jacquitratongamanahaja979]

Thank you so much, Scott.

[@Slickstef11]

Have you heard of Wundergraph? Could you do a tutorial on it? Looks Promising.

[@deeplybrown]

This was an excellent introduction to GraphQL. Thank you!

[@RobertLongM]

Im trying to understand why going from xml days to then switching to json and the a switch to yaml and now this? I’m QA so you know I’m not smart - 😁 Can someone make a video on all this? Why the change? What’s the benefit? How does the backend differ? Is it just ease of coding? Does the database look any different?

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

Tech diahhrea is the biggest problem in the tech industry. People make up endless crap for no reason without thinking and without providing any new real benefits. Meanwhile the learning curve continues to soar. Waste of time. Time to find a new industry.

[@pa3ck122]

Bit late... but... The difference is that you can dynamically request data. With REST api you have an endpoint let's say /api/getBooks which will return all books with all the fields. What if I only want the name of the book and the author? You'd need to create a separate endpoint that only returns those, but what if a different page also requires date of release? Another endpoint? With GraphQL instead of the return data being hardcoded, it let's you request the data the way you want it on a given screen without the need for multiple hardcoded endpoints. Also, developers switched from XML to JSON because it's way easier to read and write.

[@RobertLongM]

@@pa3ck122 Thank You... Not late - I never got a reply! Now I get it

[@dev-playing-gt]

Thank you for the simple and kind video.

[@rjrjrjj4461]

thank you Scott

[@oscarquinteros4108]

Greate tutorial, I am a newbie and just curious. Can I have both API and Frontend (displaying content using maybe handlebars ) on the same projects?

[@TheMrVogue]

An API is a a term that simply describes the set of functions provided to a programmer via a library, or service. It stands for application programming interface, so it is the set of functions or tools you as a programmer interact with in order to perform particular operations. With that said, there are many different ways to organize a project, and many different ways to use different API's. I think you need to be more specific with your question, although you may not have the technical knowledge yet to ask what you're trying to ask... Typically, web dev involves two major uses of API's. 1) - API's are provided to you in libraries in JavaScript to create "dynamic" pages that respond to requests made from the JavaScript to web services, i.e. endpoints on the internet. You can think of an endpoint as the address to some set of data on the web, and you can pass an endpoint some special rules to tell it how you want to receive that data. 2) - API's are also provided to the programmer via libraries/packages on the backend ( the code that hooks up databases to endpoints via some kind of language on a server). These API's are almost all designed to handle requests or do special things with the database(s). So I think the way you should be thinking of this for the time being is that there are API's exposed to you as the programmer via a libraries to help you make requests on the frontend to your backend, and then there are API's you can use on your backend so that you can talk to your database or respond to requests from the frontend properly. So, to give you an example of an API, I want to give you the following examples. Let's say we've got a package called React, inside of the React library, we have a couple of pieces of code we can import into our project, such as React, or React.Component, etc. Each of the things we can import from the library is considered the API. It is the linguistic/symbolic bridge between the programmer and a piece of functionality that can be imported into a project. Final note, you'll hear people talk about REST API's, and this may throw you off a little bit. At the end of the day, they're pretty much the same thing, it's just that the interface they are providing to the programmer is a little different than let's say in Python or JavaScript. A REST API is simply an HTTP interface that provides people with a uniform way for performing certain requests (operations) over HTTP, which is the set of rules that drive how information should be passed between a client and a server for the purpose of web browsing. So instead of normal code, you can think of it as a special set of rules and a symbolic way of representing how requests should be made to a server over the internet.

[@chrislopezzz]

I love the way you explain. Thanks for making this so crystal clear :-)

[@Frome1988]

Thanks for the great video. Keep it up!

[@shahid28285]

This looks like SOAP definition of the API call, but in Javascript. Yet to explore more on this.

[@liausdhfsdgfgf]

Wow thats quite a cool and simple way to get the data you want.

[@davidhanover8224]

so an API, as i understand it, is just a series of functions written by someone else, that do a thing they specified for you, sometimes on their servers, sometimes they'll let you download their packages and do it on your servers. am i getting this right? traditionally, an API is a series of functions that are run by the creators' servers that you have to wait for. usually, their API is just an abstraction over some SQL queries that they run for you. does graphQL aim to replace SQL? i've been wondering, why not just allow the client to run SQL queries straight from the front end? Obviously injection issues and table deletion and stuff, but there's got to be some work-around.

[@dnsmarinov23]

For the entire video he said the word "graphQL" exactly 60 times.

[@abdAlmajedSaleh]

your not programer right ?

[@dnsmarinov23]

Abdalmajed Saleh How did you make this assumption?

[@abdAlmajedSaleh]

@@dnsmarinov23 yes because programmer's will focus on his explanations. and if he understand he will not open this video. but some people's may just find the link somewhere

[@dnsmarinov23]

Abdalmajed Saleh it seems that you’re using the internet for the second time

[@abdAlmajedSaleh]

@@dnsmarinov23 and i didn't do what you did 😋

[@ricl11]

Isn't that just another abstraction layer for the database specific SQL dialects?

[@syntaxfm]

Sort of. It's more of a replacement for REST APIs. You're able to grab all the data from one endpoint rather that individual api endpoints.

[@lfzhu586]

Feels like the web service version of entity framework

[@prettyprinted]

Great overview Scott. Playing around with Graphene has been on my todo list for a while.

[@abhishekkalia2702]

Still making flask videos?

[@kumarsen88]

Checkout his Django Rest videos as well. Pretty cool if you've just started. :)

[@chuckohana]

awesome video, thank you so much. quick question ... is there a way to query from command line using "curl" for example?

[@BryanChance]

You can do pretty much the thing in the regular REST API model. I do like that GraphQL is standardized and makes it easy. But don't let your external public apis become a database. Hehe -:/)

[@yomajo]

Starts at 0:55

[@imlautaro123]

Great video 👍 new subscriber

[@rickyj1]

Just from a first look into graphQL, it seems kinda confusing when `Query` is defined underneith `Schema`. Generally using an ORM or manipulating a database directly these two concepts are siblings, i.e query the schema.

[@_modiX]

Honestly, OData2 offers the same without the requirement to use any libraries on the client side. It's a better choice if you want to make a public API.

[@klarnorbert]

Most of the employers ask for GraphQL knowledge.

[@TheCreativeRio]

that was just awesome. thanks for this great intro

[@jwoods9659]

Apis are so frustrating, I have Datocms setup and I still do get how to pull stuff to my project

[@martinsnow6641]

Holy shit that's awesome. Now i know what to do in the weekend!

[@rickqin8624]

So, what's happened to Facebook in 2018 or even earlier? Why does it have some sort of REPUTATION issue?

[@ppalleve]

Great overview , thanks for putting this together.

[@viveksakpal3231]

Thanks for easy explanation...

[@harbilito4910]

Is graphql good to use in manipulating sap hana service layer?

[@shuntakanke9585]

awesome job !!! thx

[@reristavi]

Thank you for the excellent introduction

[@shaheer5547]

starts @ 00:55

[@wotwot6868]

So is it a database? Or a layer on top of existing DB?

[@MrNederlande]

Layer on top of db

[@colloredbrothers]

Very good introduction

[@Elemento000]

GraphQl is really good stuff!!!! Thanks!

[@Daijyobanai]

So for me to use GraphQL in my project, the API I query has to be set up as GraphQL server? I can't just use this to query any old API?

[@ericzorn3735]

I keep hearing about GraphQL as a new web developer. This is revolutionary for querying compared to standard SQL

[@alexagna]

It's not to be compared to SQL : SQL is for database queries, while GraphQL is for data queries, it is database agnostic, data agnostic. It doesn't define how, so you can litterally query anything. It is to be compared to REST and yes, it's absolutely revolutionary compared to good old REST.

[@ericzorn3735]

Alexandre Gomes Thank you for the reply, I have been watching a lot of videos. I really think I’m going to start using this in my professional projects

[@bright5801]

Just finished a restful API then i see this

[@auronedgevicks7739]

TLDR; make sql queries on your rest api

[@FajnyAleZaNiski]

+1, Relay works now? I remember this was crap about 2 years ago

[@cis84muz]

Graphcool looks perfect for me. It is first on my todo, to-learn things :)

[@lunar-ix9vu]

I have my blogposts categorized, and the categories are displayed on the side. How to only show blogposts for a category clicked by the user?

[@williamdelacruz7302]

That's Amazing! Thank you for explain us!

[@lfzhu586]

Feels like the web service version of entity framework

[@MetalStorm66]

What type of database do you have to use? Mongo or PostgreSQL?

[@krishnachavali2639]

both if u can

[@shutupcuh111]

mongo more best

[@kabuna-mimoamirov8135]

front end developers would be much happy of it but me as a backend developer I have an issue with how graphQl gets the data, what logic it uses?

[@FredoCorleone]

Kind similar to MongoDB way of querying data?

[@_ericsonluciano]

This is awesome waiting for tutorials for graphql server :)

[@julianaferry]

So cool!!

[@AllWeAreBadKids]

Thank you for this intro. Appreciated it

[@Wyvernnnn]

How about inserting data ?

[@BlueyMcPhluey]

very clear, cheers

[@Dexter101x]

Doved into it? Or dived into it?

[@Itay38]

6:16 WHat just happened

[@registryd3069]

video cut

[@sumantkanala]

Great introduction and I loved the podcast too. I had some questions but I didn't know where to ask it, so here it is. Is there any overhead on the server processing these graphQL queries rather than client filtering the whole object and using only what's needed?

[@syntaxfm]

I don't think filtering could have any negative effects on server performance. That said, Apollo has something called Apollo Engine that examines all of your queries and allows you to see slow or troubled resolvers to adjust for performance.

[@sumantkanala]

Thanks for this and the quick reply Scott! All hail GraphQL.. __/\__

[@syntaxfm]

+sumant kanala my thoughts exactly!

[@innovativatk]

Json QL

[@mohsinrahman8107]

What is difference between GraphQL and RestApi?

[@shoqed]

well in REST you pretty much list resources and navigate, this is what he is referring to when he talks about youtube API in the beginning. GraphQL allows you to construct queries and decide on data structure client-side

[@tolrantfrank2562]

Please give me the project

[@rhidlor8577]

Any downsides?

[@faiz697]

Can anybody clarifiy on graphQL.... since its ql for api, meaning i can replace my RestApi with it. but if there is some problem with the database like the time for fetching data from database is too long, graphQL cannot solve that problem. It depends upon our own implementation to solve that problem. GraphQL has nothing to do with database. It only for reducing the amount of data that are send from backend to frontend. am i right?

[@jonasgrnbek7113]

A rest api has nothing to do with the database either. GraphQL and Rest API have a lot in common, they are both middleware and are sending data through endpoints. The difference is how they do it. GraphQL has a single endpoint, and the request has the information about what to retrieve. In a rest API the url has the information about what to retrieve. Should the database be slow, you should work that out in the DB or the code accessing your DB. Not in GraphQL or clientside. DB GraphQL-serverside GraphQL-clientside View

[@mza1409]

Very Json-like syntax

[@clodicious]

I keep hearing GraphQL enthusiasts bashing relational SQL then say "In GraphQL, you only get back what you want!"... but SQL works the same way. You want everything in the table(s)? You specify * (asterisk) in your SELECT. You just want certain columns in each table? You just specify those columns. You may want to specify table aliases to make things easier, but SQL works the same as GraphQL when it comes to fetching "what you want".

[@okeuwechue9238]

GraphQL... JSON equivalent of a basic XML XPath query?

[@jonasgrnbek7113]

nope

[@stevefu7317]

What about Facebook?

[@RanTutorials]

I've only ever heard your voice from the podcast so stumbling upon your youtube video is very strange

[@TK-fo5xl]

It's name should be JsonQL.

[@kk3528]

👍

[@clintongallagher]

Thank the gods for Ctrl-F. Wes Bos has made thousands of dollars selling stickers but he can't afford to hire a guy to put a search box on their syntax.fm podcast page which has the most fucked up useability I've seen dudes like Boss who know better not care about.

[@haroldpepete]

Every day appear another application whos better from the other, and finally alls do it the same thing but in a diferent way, all this stuff is out of control

[@syntaxfm]

GraphQL by no means does the same thing. It's a huge shift in how you work with APIs and data. This is not some framework churn or something like that.

[@haroldpepete]

@@syntaxfm then give him the opportunity, i read something and look it cool, thank for your video

[@IproCoGo]

"The best shared web hosting" Haha, I'm not sure "best" and "shared..." make sense together.

[@syntaxfm]

Shared hosting has it's place. I wouldn't host Level Up on it, but I'd host a client blog or static site on it.

[@IproCoGo]

You are right, but it is still funny in a very dry kind of way.

[@m00semanus]

Am I the only one that felt this “tutorial” was more of an ad that literally just walked through the GrahQL spec page?

[@syntaxfm]

The video is simply What Is GraphQL. What more should this quick introduction to a topic include? It's not a "how to" video.

[@clodicious]

The only reason to use GraphQL is if you want a JavaScript way to work with stored data.

[@waytospergtherebro]

It's how lazy backend engineers can work with lazy mobile engineers without learning how to do anything correctly, ever.

[@bhrugudesai]

Took too much time

[@Daijyobanai]

dove != dived Good video though, sorry to be that guy.

[@artursvalujevs275]

Came for literally graph (as in data structure, see "graph theory") query language. Disappointed by naming choice.

[@StingSting844]

Disappointed with the video. I came to learn but its again some hype video!

[@syntaxfm]

The title is What Is GraphQL. Was that question not answered? What else were you expecting this video to cover?

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

Do we really need this endless tech diarrhea?

[@syntaxfm]

GraphQL and other new tech solves very real problems that developers face every day. Maybe you don't need the tech in your life or workflow, but it's important to understand that people don't use stuff like this just because it's new. I'd be interested in knowing what other tech you think is in this same category?

[@trangvu2107]

so touching for an excellent video