What is GraphQL? Advantages and Disadvantages of GraphQL

GraphQL is a new API standard, essentially a query language for APIs; it provides an efficient, powerful and flexible way to query data. The following article will take you to understand GraphQL and introduce the advantages and disadvantages of GraphQL. I hope it will be helpful to you.

What is GraphQL?

GraphQL was created directly for different APIs, a data query language for APIs, a new API standard, and an execution engine. Its main purpose is to use a flexible syntax and system that simply describes data requirements and interactions.

Pros and cons of GraphQL

No one can say that a tool is completely perfect. When you think about starting to use GraphQL, it's a good idea to understand its advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages

1. Request and get the data you want

Send GraphQL query to your API and get what you need; GraphQL query Predictable results are always returned; applications using GraphQL are fast and stable.

2. Obtain many resources in a single request

GraphQL query can not only obtain the properties of the resource, but also further query along the references between resources. GraphQL can get all the data your application needs with a single request. In this way, applications using GraphQL can perform quickly even on slow mobile network connections.

3. Possibility of describing type systems

GraphQL is strongly typed, and queries are based on fields and their associated data types. If there is a type mismatch in a GraphQL query, the server application will return a clear and helpful error message. This helps client applications to debug smoothly and detect errors easily. GraphQL also provides client libraries that can help reduce explicit data conversion and parsing.

4. Powerful developer tools

GraphQL provides rich developer tools for documents and test queries. GraphiQL is an excellent tool for generating documentation of queries and their schemas. It also provides a query editor for testing GraphQL APIs and smart code completion when building queries.

5. The development time is short.

One of the main benefits of using GraphQL is that some development work can be completed faster. For example, instead of writing a huge text of code, it may be enough to use only one or two main functions to achieve your needs.

Disadvantages

GraphQL lacks a proper middleware structure. This can be solved by dividing it into different scenarios. It is possible to create APIs that group functionality based on the middleware that needs to be turned off, but many scenarios are not optimal.

Of course, if the entire project is functionally compact, the development process will not be stagnant. Keep in mind that you may have to deal with such issues.

Another thing is the issue of bugs. We must admit and remember that during the development process, if faced with several serious and harmful errors, this will lead to the inability to properly manage the API.

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