GraphQL ¶

GraphQL (Graph Query Language) is an open-source query language for APIs. It's used by GitHub, Shopify, and Facebook internally.

• GraphQL Documentation (⛪)
• GitHub (19.8k ⭐)

It was designed to provide a more efficient, powerful, and flexible alternative to traditional REST APIs.

To query the id,username of the user with id=123:

query {
  user(id: 123) {
    id
    username
  }
}

Each object has a type. Each type has attributes. The type may have a constructor with arguments that are required to query an object.

{__schema{types{name}}}
{__schema{types{name,fields{name}}}}
{__schema{types{name,fields{name},description}}}
{__schema{types{name,fields{name,args{name,description,type{name,kind,ofType{name, kind}}}}}}}

After identifying the types and their arguments, we can query them:

{MyType{field1, field2}}
{MyType(arg:value){field1, field2}}