5 ms·

With HTTP2, it's now almost always better to go with a RESTful API, especially if you need to do heavy calculations and display dashboards with a lot of data.

by _92eu 7y ago

With HTTP2, it's now almost always better to go with a RESTful API, especially if you need to do heavy calculations and display dashboards with a lot of data. You will be able to fine tune your cache settings and monitor the performance of your endpoints (https://medium.com/@__xuorig__/why-graphql-performance-monitoring-is-hard-41381bc7c44d https://medium.com/@__xuorig__/why-graphql-performance-monit...) You will be able to fetch resources in parallel and start displaying data faster (GraphQL Apollo is also able to do some king of streaming, but it relies heavily on non-standard network hacks). You will be able to use Vulcain (https://vulcain.rocks/ https://vulcain.rocks/) which will allow you to fetch your whole resource graph at once using HTTP2 Server Push. The only reason you may choose GraphQL is if you need to go fast and want to profit from the DX of the awesome React libraries available such as Relay or Apollo.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
strken 7y ago
This is misleading and parts of it aren't true. Comparing GraphQL to REST is apples to oranges and misses most of the advantages. GraphQL is a way to dynamically generate API endpoints[0] from A) a schema describing a graph, B) a query describing the endpoint, and C) functions which fetch objects from the graph defined in A. Why would this be useful? Can't you just write endpoints or use a single RESTful endpoint per model? Well, on some large projects, you have a very large number of endpoints supporting a slightly different set of views that are all based on the same data, and most of those endpoints load more data than they need. GraphQL allows you to replace an entire suite of presentation layers with a declarative schema that's smaller and more easily reasoned about, and which only loads what you actually need. You also get some other things for free - n+1 queries happen within the data centre and are therefore faster, you can avoid opening a lot of HTTP1 connections, etc. - but these things are only side benefits. The core benefit is making your big procedural presentation layer smaller and more declarative. [0] This is not strictly true, a GraphQL query isn't an endpoint, but for me they occupy the same conceptual space.
- deckard1 7y ago
  > Comparing GraphQL to REST is apples to oranges Just because you say that, doesn't make it true. > most of those endpoints load more data than they need GraphQL proponents seem to forget query parameters exist. It has never been the case that REST has to return more than you need. Never. Not now, not ten years ago. Why people keep repeating this obviously false claim is bizarre. The hoops you have to jump through to get GraphQL efficient as off-the-shelf REST are rather insane. Caching, both client and server side, have to be entirely reinvented. What Apollo does may be open source but it's also proprietary. And at this point, a single corporation controls the entire stack. Without Apollo, GraphQL is a terrible joke.
  - strken 7y ago
    > GraphQL proponents seem to forget query parameters exist. It has never been the case that REST has to return more than you need. Never. Not now, not ten years ago. Why people keep repeating this obviously false claim is bizarre. You need to use something that does the same thing as GraphQL, e.g. allows you to define a graph of relationships and then query them, and can have many of the same tradeoffs, e.g. not being cacheable or not allowing you to stream the result. If you like the other thing better than GraphQL (I've used https://jsonapi.org/ https://jsonapi.org/ and https://loopback.io/ https://loopback.io/, among others), by all means use it. This is what I mean when I say comparing GraphQL to REST is apples to oranges. REST is general and broad and GraphQL is narrow and specific, so the comparison isn't meaningful unless we start talking about specific libraries, frameworks, specs, or patterns that use REST to do the same thing GraphQL does.
    - digitaltrees 7y ago
      Check out Graphiti.dev it shows how a few common sense conventions in REST give most or all the power of GraphQL. I think the phrase “comparing apples to oranges” is a bit misleading in this context because it is normally used to imply that such comparison is impossible or not useful (i.e. a fruitless exercise, sorry, I couldn’t help it). But here there is a lot to compare. REST is built with the basic infrastructure of the web in mind so massive amounts of infrastructure like caching, error messaging do need to be rebuilt. GraphQL has some real benefits so a comprehensive comparison is worth it. Ultimately both are an api design to facilitate getting data. It’s sort of like comparing Postgres to MongoDB. Yes there are major differences but the expected use is to store data. Comparing is crucial. Either way. Have fun building cool stuff.

by _92eu 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

strken 7y ago

This is misleading and parts of it aren't true. Comparing GraphQL to REST is apples to oranges and misses most of the advantages. GraphQL is a way to dynamically generate API endpoints[0] from A) a schema describing a graph, B) a query describing the endpoint, and C) functions which fetch objects from the graph defined in A. Why would this be useful? Can't you just write endpoints or use a single RESTful endpoint per model? Well, on some large projects, you have a very large number of endpoints supporting a slightly different set of views that are all based on the same data, and most of those endpoints load more data than they need. GraphQL allows you to replace an entire suite of presentation layers with a declarative schema that's smaller and more easily reasoned about, and which only loads what you actually need. You also get some other things for free - n+1 queries happen within the data centre and are therefore faster, you can avoid opening a lot of HTTP1 connections, etc. - but these things are only side benefits. The core benefit is making your big procedural presentation layer smaller and more declarative. [0] This is not strictly true, a GraphQL query isn't an endpoint, but for me they occupy the same conceptual space.

deckard1 7y ago
> Comparing GraphQL to REST is apples to oranges Just because you say that, doesn't make it true. > most of those endpoints load more data than they need GraphQL proponents seem to forget query parameters exist. It has never been the case that REST has to return more than you need. Never. Not now, not ten years ago. Why people keep repeating this obviously false claim is bizarre. The hoops you have to jump through to get GraphQL efficient as off-the-shelf REST are rather insane. Caching, both client and server side, have to be entirely reinvented. What Apollo does may be open source but it's also proprietary. And at this point, a single corporation controls the entire stack. Without Apollo, GraphQL is a terrible joke.
- strken 7y ago
  > GraphQL proponents seem to forget query parameters exist. It has never been the case that REST has to return more than you need. Never. Not now, not ten years ago. Why people keep repeating this obviously false claim is bizarre. You need to use something that does the same thing as GraphQL, e.g. allows you to define a graph of relationships and then query them, and can have many of the same tradeoffs, e.g. not being cacheable or not allowing you to stream the result. If you like the other thing better than GraphQL (I've used https://jsonapi.org/ https://jsonapi.org/ and https://loopback.io/ https://loopback.io/, among others), by all means use it. This is what I mean when I say comparing GraphQL to REST is apples to oranges. REST is general and broad and GraphQL is narrow and specific, so the comparison isn't meaningful unless we start talking about specific libraries, frameworks, specs, or patterns that use REST to do the same thing GraphQL does.
  - digitaltrees 7y ago
    Check out Graphiti.dev it shows how a few common sense conventions in REST give most or all the power of GraphQL. I think the phrase “comparing apples to oranges” is a bit misleading in this context because it is normally used to imply that such comparison is impossible or not useful (i.e. a fruitless exercise, sorry, I couldn’t help it). But here there is a lot to compare. REST is built with the basic infrastructure of the web in mind so massive amounts of infrastructure like caching, error messaging do need to be rebuilt. GraphQL has some real benefits so a comprehensive comparison is worth it. Ultimately both are an api design to facilitate getting data. It’s sort of like comparing Postgres to MongoDB. Yes there are major differences but the expected use is to store data. Comparing is crucial. Either way. Have fun building cool stuff.