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by thomassharoon 1413 days ago
There are patterns that can get you the same benefits without having to use GraphQL.

Even on a REST API, you can achieve the same pros

> - It makes working with describing the data you want easy > - It can save you bandwidth. Get what you ask for and no more

You can describe the fields you need (and I assume that is what reduces the bandwidth)

GET /users?fields=name,addresses.street,addresses.zip

> - It makes documentation for data consumers easy

I don't think so in practice. You can see Shopify's GraphQL documentation [1]. If anything it is more complex than their REST API docs

> - It can make subscription easier for you to use

Not too different from using something like SSE or even websockets and every decent web framework seems to have a decent implementation

> - Can let you federate API calls

So many ways to achieve this at the application layer (which is what GraphQL federation does with a Router). In the python world this could be separate WSGI apps or racks in ruby? And makes no difference if done at the load balancer level.

[1] https://shopify.dev/api/admin-graphql/2022-07/enums/localiza...

1 comments

There a lot of ways to do the same thing as GraphQL. The point is if it’s as easy.