GraphQL or Bust: To Use It Or Not: That Is The Question

Discover the benefits of GraphQL and gauge if it’s a good move for your web API.

GraphQL, the data modeling language developed by Facebook, has been making ripples throughout the economy since its inception in 2013. GraphQL or Bust helps determine the position of GraphQL within the API ecosystem. We explore things like the benefits of using GraphQL, the differences between it and REST, nuanced security concerns, extending GraphQL with additional tooling, licensing issues, GraphQL-specific consoles, making a transition to GraphQL from an existing web API, and much more.

GraphQL presents a sea change in how API providers enable access to their data, and can bring high usability benefits to consumers. Smart API owners put emphasis into treating their services as a product; this means improving the developer experience and fine-tuning the user onboarding mechanism. As GraphQL enables an unparalleled ability to display API endpoints and test call behaviors, as well as an operational boost in aggregating API responses, it could very well be the tool API owners are searching for to improve their developer experiences.

But we aren’t quick to bandwagon on any new technology without first opening the floor to debate. So, over the past year we exhausted many subjects on the blog, throwing GraphQL into the security ring, judging the process of migrating a REST API to GraphQL, vetting any outsanding licensing issues, and searching for GraphQL APIs in practice today as evidence of its use. We’ve compared it to other methods of linking API calls, charted industry best practices, and looked at the growing spectrum of GraphQL tooling.

In this volume we’ve aggregated nearly all of the GraphQL knowledge that has been shared on the Nordic APIs blog and at our conferences. Being a relatively new technology, some may still have questions about it, and we hope to answer those questions as well as open avenues of discussion around new concerns.

The truth is your current systems likely won’t “bust” without GraphQL. The title for this eBook represents the fervent community adoption we’ve seen quickly embrace the technology.