Documentation can be found here. The content for the documentation lives here
GraphQL is a query language spec that was open sourced by Facebook® in 2015, and has been used in production by Facebook® since 2012.
GraphQL has some similarities to REST in that it exposes an HTTP endpoint where requests can be sent and a JSON response is returned. However, where REST has a different endpoint per resource, GraphQL has just a single endpoint and the data returned isn't implicit, but rather explicit and matches the shape of the request.
A REST API is implicit, meaning that the data coming back from an endpoint is implied. An endpoint such as /posts/
implies that the data I will retrieve is data related to Post objects, but beyond that it's hard to know exactly what
will be returned. It might be more data than I need or might not be the data I need at all.
GraphQL is explicit, meaning that you ask for the data you want and you get the data back in the same shape that it was asked for.
Additionally, where REST requires multiple HTTP requests for related data, GraphQL allows related data to be queried and retrieved in a single request, and again, in the same shape of the request without any worry of over or under-fetching data.
GraphQL also provides rich introspection, allowing for queries to be run to find out details about the Schema, which is how powerful dev tools, such as GraphiQl have been able to be created.
GraphiQL is a fantastic GraphQL API Explorer / IDE. There are various versions of GraphiQL that you can find, including a Chrome Extension but my recommendation is the GraphiQL desktop app below:
-
Download the GraphiQL Desktop App
- Once the app is downloaded and installed, open the App.
- Set the
GraphQL Endpointtohttp://yoursite.com/graphql. In order for the /graphql endpoint to work, you must have pretty permalinks enabled. - You should now be able to browse the GraphQL Schema via the "Docs" explorer at the top right.
- On the left side, you can execute GraphQL Queries
