The Best (GraphQL) API is One You Write

As a front-end developer, I appreciate GraphQL's elegant data exposure. It's like a customizable menu, letting me request precisely the data I need for UI components, avoiding excessive API calls or dependence on back-end developers for bespoke APIs.

However, someone creates that data menu. If it's your in-house GraphQL API, you control everything. But if it's a third-party API, like a CMS, your control is limited. You're stuck with the pre-defined menu; no additions or substitutions allowed.

This limitation was highlighted in a ShopTalk discussion with Simen Skogsrud and Knut Melvær of Sanity. Sanity, a JSON data storage and CMS, uses its own query language, GROQ, instead of GraphQL. Initially, this seems like a step backward – creating a proprietary language instead of using the industry standard.

But Simen and Knut pointed out GraphQL's limitations when used as a third-party API: you're restricted to the provided options. For example, a generic GraphQL API for authors might only offer:

<code>{
  allAuthors {
    author {
      name
      username
      avatar
    }
  }
}</code>

If you need the number of authors, not the authors themselves, you're out of luck. You'd have to fetch all authors and count them client-side.

A CMS offering a GraphQL endpoint faces a choice: strict, limited data access, or a way to extend and control that access. Sanity chose the latter, providing GROQ, an open-sourced query language powerful enough to access any data within the JSON store.

With GROQ, you don't need API modifications to retrieve the author count. You could use a query like:

<code>{ "totalAuthors": count(*[_type == "author"]) }</code>

(Note: This is conceptual; the exact syntax depends on the queried JSON.)

GROQ's advantages:

• Unrestricted querying: Access any data.
• Simplified architecture: No intermediary configuration layer.

Disadvantages:

• Complex syntax: Steeper learning curve.
• Limited integration: Reduced opportunities for multi-API connections, permission-based data access, etc.

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