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One thing to keep in mind is that GraphQL really supports a different use case than something like gRPC or REST. One of the places where it really shines is pr
by adamkl 7y ago
One thing to keep in mind is that GraphQL really supports a different use case than something like gRPC or REST.
One of the places where it really shines is providing a queryable API entry point to a graph of interconnected data. This makes it ideal for generally reusable APIs for consumption by a variety of clients (e.g. GitHub's GraphQL API).
gRPC interfaces are typically use-case specific, and performance oriented (though GraphQL doesn't specify any sort of transport protocol, so you could always serialize GraphQL request/responses with protobufs to gain some performance over the wire), making them well suited for server-to-server communication, but not generally reusable.
REST is resource (i.e. nodes in a graph) based, but doesn't necessarily do a good job of making the relationships explicit and easy to traverse (I'm sure there are good HATOAES implementations out there that address this, but I haven't seen one).
Both REST and gRPC have their place, but I think GraphQL is a clear winner when you want to build a single API to service a large number of distinct clients. It really does offer a clear, easy-to-use API abstraction over where ever you might get your data from.
Also, since you call out code generation specifically; GraphQL provides a strongly-typed schema that can be introspected against, and the tooling to parse queries/schemas into abstract syntax trees. A large number of tools have been built with these capabilities including a number of different code generators. I've even used a GraphQL schema to generate a matching XSD (ugh) for import into an internal business rules engine. Made integration a breeze.