Since the beginning of the web, developing APIs has been a difficult task for developers. Development of our APIs must evolve with time so that we can always build intuitive and well-design APIs. GraphQL has been in popularity among developers. A lot of companies have started adopting this technology to build their APIs. Facebook’s GraphQL is a query language which came to use in 2015.
There are many companies which uses GraphQL such as Spotify, Facebook, GitHub, NYTimes, Netflix, Walmart, and so on. In this series of tutorials, we’re going to examine it, understand what it is, and see what features make this query language so intuitive and easy to use. So, let’s get started by examining the problems with REST, and how this language solves them. We will also find out why companies have been building their APIs with this, and why it is the future of APIs.
Why APIs are so important ?
But first of all what is this so called API ?
API is a set of protocols for the creation and integration of application software. API enables one software to communicate with the other software without any complication. Today it is very much important in web development and mobile app development to simplify the development.
It saves time, cost, and effort. In today’s digital world, most of the business environment are using the API, which is a software that enables two applications to exchange data among each other. It is true that APIs are fast becoming a powerful business tool that allows companies to accelerate digital transformation and a great way to move the business forward. API provides new opportunities, connecting your business in different ways that weren’t possible before. Bringing your people together internally through ERP as well as strengthening the connection with customers and partners through CRM.
API speeds up communication. Imagine if we want to show some data from the government website or our social media feeds on our website. In that case, we would need to update this information manually either from the backend in the case of a dynamic website or through HTML in the case of a static website. Both are a time-consuming process. It would become very difficult to maintain it up to date. In another way, we can ask the other party to allow us to access their data through API. And if we integrate the APIs to our website we can show these updated data automatically.
GraphQL makes it easy to start building APIs and be consistent
A lot of people think that GraphQL is pretty complicated because it involves a schema and a single endpoint. Once you start developing APIs with it, you discover that it’s easier than you thought. An “endpoint-only” API helps a lot when you’re developing your website/app. It makes your API more self-documented, and there’s no need for you to write a lot of documentation about it.The fact that GraphQL is an open source query language means that the community can contribute to it and make improvements to it. When Facebook released it to the community, it gained a lot of traction and approval from developers.
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