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Top GraphQL tutorials reviewed 2019

Robert Matyszewski

8/28/2019

Top GraphQL tutorials reviewed 2019

Are you wondering where to start learning or improve your GraphQL sklls? Which tutorial to start?

Don’t worry - I’ve checked all the best tutorials available on the internet and reviewed them for you.

At first you have table of contents and later each tutorial with description what’s inside. Enjoy.

Table of content

FUNDAMENTALS

ADVANCED

REACT

VUE

JAVA

RUBY

NODE

APOLLO

PYTHON

ELIXIR

FUNDAMENTALS

Introduction to GraphQL @graphql.org

What’s inside:

  • Queries and Mutations
    • Fields
    • Arguments
    • Aliases
    • Fragments
    • Operation Name
    • Variables
    • Directives
    • Mutations
    • Inline Fragments
  • Schemas and Types
    • Type System
    • Type Language
    • Object Types and Fields
    • Arguments
    • The Query and Mutation Types
    • Scalar Types
    • Enumeration Types
    • Lists and Non-Null
    • Interfaces
    • Union Types
    • Input Types
  • Validation
  • Execution
  • Introspection

Learn GraphQL for absolute beginners @tutorialspoint

What’s inside:

  • Introduction
  • Environment Setup
  • Architecture
  • Application Components
  • Example
  • Type System
  • Schema
  • Resolver
  • Query
  • Mutation
  • Validation
  • JQuery Integration
  • React Integration
  • Apollo Client
  • Authenticating Client
  • Caching

Basics Tutorial - Introduction to GraphQL @HowToGraphQL

What’s inside:

  • Introduction
  • GraphQL is the better REST
  • Core Concepts
  • Big Picture (Architecture)

A Beginner’s Guide to GraphQL @freecodecamp by Leonardo Maldonado

What's inside:

  • What is GraphQL?
  • Getting started
  • Schema
  • Types
  • Queries
  • Mutations
  • Subscriptions
  • Conclusion

Video: Zero to GraphQL in 30 Minutes by Steven Luscher

What's inside:

Adapt your existing ORM, SOA, or REST API to GraphQL so that you can begin to use GraphQL-based technologies like Relay.

  • python django
  • ruby rails
  • node express

Learn GraphQL In 40 Minutes @WebDevSimplified

What's inside:

In this video author will be teaching you what GraphQL is, why it is important, why it is better than REST, and then we will be walking through an entire Node.js and Express GraphQL API for books and authors. By the end of this video you will have a complete understanding of what GraphQL is and how to use it.

GraphQL Full Course - Novice to Expert @freeCodeCamp.org

What's inside:

Complete course on GraphQL where you will create a full-stack application from scratch using:

  • GraphQL server on Node.js
  • React front-end (with Apollo)
  • MongoDB to store data

Video: GraphQL - The Documentary (Official Release)

What's inside:

Starring Lee Byron, Dan Schafer and Nick Schrock (co-creators of GraphQL) and other big names from the #GraphQL community, The Movie explores the story of why and how GraphQL came to be and the impact it's having on big #tech companies worldwide, including Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb and Github.

ADVANCED

GraphQL Best Practices @graphql.org

What’s inside

  • Introduction
  • Thinking in Graphs
  • Serving over HTTP
  • Authorization
  • Pagination
  • Caching

Advanced Tutorial @HowToGraphQL

What’s inside:

  • Clients
  • Server
  • More GraphQL Concepts
  • Tooling and Ecosystem
  • Security
  • Common Questions

Getting Started with GitHub's GraphQL API by Robin Wieruch

What’s inside

  • Getting Started with GitHub's GraphQL API
  • A GraphQL Tutorial for Beginners
  • A complete React with GraphQL Tutorial
  • A Apollo Client Tutorial for Beginners
  • A complete React with Apollo and GraphQL Tutorial

GraphQL vs. REST - A GraphQL Tutorial @toptal.com by Amaury Martiny

What's inside:

The aim of this tutorial is to help you make an easy transition from REST to GraphQL, whether you’ve already made your mind for GraphQL or you’re just willing to give it a try. No prior knowledge of GraphQL is needed, but some familiarity with REST APIs is required to understand the article.

EBOOK: The road to GraphQL by Robin Wieruch

  • What is GraphQL?
    • GraphQL Advantages
    • GraphQL Disadvantages
    • Why not REST?
    • GraphQL Alternatives
  • Apollo
    • Apollo Advantages
    • Apollo Disadvantages
    • Apollo Alternatives for JavaScript, React and Node.js
  • GraphQL Setup, Tools and APIs
    • Feeding the API with Data on GitHub
    • Read/Write Data with GitHub’s Personal Access Token
    • Interacting with GitHub’s GraphQL API
  • GraphQL Fundamentals
  • React with GraphQL
  • Apollo Client
  • React with GraphQL and Apollo Client
  • Node.js with GraphQL and Apollo Server

Video: Moving Existing API From REST To GraphQL by Brooks Swinnerton, Github

What's inside:

Brooks Swinnerton - a Github developer presents an introduction to the query language, how GitHub uses it internally with Ruby and Rails, and the lessons they learned launching their GraphQL API externally.

Video: Discussion Panel - Scaling GraphQL for Production

What's inside:

In this panel, hear from some of the first big companies to adopt GraphQL and learn how they are scaling GraphQL for production apps. Moderated by Meteor and Apollo Co-Founder Matt DeBergalis.

Speakers:

  • Kenton Jacobsen, Conde Nast
  • Nick Nance, Credit Karma
  • Mike Isman, Hudl
  • Aaron Weiker, Concur

Video: Reconciling Thrift and GraphQL at Airbnb (Adam Neary)

What's inside:

Adam Neary, technical lead at Airbnb, describes his team's approach to transitioning Airbnb's product engineering stack to Apollo and GraphQL, leveraging the company's investments in Thrift-based microservices while gaining the product development benefits of GraphQL and the full-stack Apollo suite of tools. Adam shows how infrastructure and product engineers collaborated on design requirements and gives a close look at some of the design and implementation they're rolling out in production.

Video: Deploying a Serverless GraphQL API - Sashko Stubailo

What's inside:

Sashko Stubailo from Apollo speaks about deploying a serverless GraphQL API with AWS Lambda and Apollo Engine. More and more, we find that GraphQL APIs are being developed by product developers that don't want to worry about operating backend services. The serverless function model of deployment has a lot of benefits for APIs, but isn't as well suited when you need some stateful features such as caching or performance metrics aggregation. In this talk, Sashko presents a solution that combines the best of both worlds: A stateless GraphQL API running in AWS Lambda for ease of deployment with Apollo Engine in front to handle stateful concerns.

Video: GraphQL vs REST - What is GraphQL and Why You Should Choose It @Program With Erik

What's inside:

In this video Eris discuss the differences between GraphQL and rest and why you might consider GraphQL on your next project. He also gives a beginners explanantion of what GraphQL is, and I show you the GraphQL playground.

Video: REST vs. GraphQL: Critical Look @NordicAPIs by Zdenek “Z” Nemec

What's inside:

In this talk, Zdenek take a critical look at predominant API architectural style – RESTful APIs and put it in contrast to GraphQL and Hypermedia APIs. He discuss the expected properties of distributed systems, the consequences of choosing a particular API style, and reflect these findings in the pros and cons of the popular methods.

Video: GraphQL Schema Design: Tips and tricks from the battlefield - Gustav Rydstedt

What's inside:

Verbling CTO and Co-Founder Gustav Rydstedt presents at Practical GraphQL meetup about Schema Desing and Dev Tools.

Video: Building a Better GitHub Platform with GraphQL @Brandon Black, GitHub

What's inside:

In this talk, Brandon Black share some of the motivations and driving factors behind the decision to invest in GraphQL at GitHub, why they chose to expose GraphQL interface externally to developers and some of the challenges and learnings we've encountered along the way.

REACT

React + Apollo Tutorial - Introduction @HowToGraphQL by Nikolas Burk

What’s inside:

You’re going to build a simple clone of Hackernews. Here’s a list of the features the app will have:

  • Display a list of links
  • Search the list of links
  • Users can authenticate
  • Authenticated users can create new links
  • Authenticated users can upvote links (one vote per link and user)
  • Realtime updates when other users upvote a link or create a new one

How to setup React Native + GraphQL + Relay Modern by Luiz Fernando

What’s inside:

Luiz Fernando shows you the steps and some tips to create a development environment using Relay and GraphQL.

A complete React with GraphQL Tutorial by Robin Wieruch

What’s inside:

In this client-sided GraphQL application we’ll build together, you will learn how to combine React with GraphQL. There is no clever library like Apollo Client or Relay to help you get started yet, so instead, you will perform GraphQL queries and mutations with basic HTTP requests. Later, in the next application we are going to build together, I’ll introduce Apollo as a GraphQL client for your React.js application

A complete React with Apollo and GraphQL Tutorial by Robin Wieruch

What’s inside:

In this tutorial, you will learn how to combine React with GraphQL in your application using Apollo. The Apollo toolset can be used to create a GraphQL client, GraphQL server, and other complementary applications, but you will use the Apollo Client for your React client-side application. Along the way, you will build a simplified GitHub client that consumes GitHub’s GraphQL API using Apollo instead of plain HTTP requests like the previous application.

React + Apollo Introduction @HowToGraphQL by Nikolas Burk

What’s inside:

You’re going to build a simple clone of Hackernews. Here’s a list of the features the app will have:

  • Display a list of links
  • Search the list of links
  • Users can authenticate
  • Authenticated users can create new links
  • Authenticated users can upvote links (one vote per link and user)
  • Realtime updates when other users upvote a link or create a new one

Video: A complete App with GraphQL, Node.js, MongoDB and React.js @Academind by @maxedapps

What’s inside:

What is GraphQL? When would you use GraphQL? How does GraphQL work? The first video of a complete series where we will build an entire app (an event booking app) with GraphQL, Node, MongoDB and React.js. Let's dive in!

Video: GraphQL Tutorial from scratch - full-stack application, including a GraphQL server on Node.js, a React front-end

What’s inside:

In this series we'll be creating, from scratch, a full-stack application, including a GraphQL server on Node.js, a React front-end (with Apollo) and MongoDB to store all of our data.

Video: Code an App With GraphQL, React Native and AWS AppSync: The App

What’s inside:

In these tutorial, you will create and interact with a GraphQL database using AWS AppSync and React Native. This app will have real-time and offline functionality, something we get out of the box with AppSync. In this post we'll get started by setting up the back-end with AppSync.

Video: GraphQL With React & Apollo - app using GraphQL, Express, React & Apollo @Traversy Media

What’s inside:

In this series we will build a small app using GraphQL, Express, React & Apollo. In the first part we will implement our GraphQL Express server. We will use SpaceX data using their API.

Apollo + GraphQL + React — thinking in queries by James Baxley

What’s inside:

James Baxley, technical lead at Apollo, shows how GraphQL and Apollo bring simple, powerful patterns for data fetching and state management to React, replacing fragile code with elegant queries. See examples of server side rendering, error handling, pagination, local state management, advanced patterns like optimistic UI, data prefetching, and full-stack caching, and ways to use cutting edge React features like the new suspense API without writing a line of code.

VUE

Vue + Apollo Introduction @HowToGraphQL by Nikolas Burk

What’s inside:

You’re going to build a simple clone of Hackernews. The final product can be viewed here. Here’s a list of the features the app will have:

  • Display a list of links
  • Search the list of links
  • Users can authenticate
  • Authenticated users can create new links
  • Authenticated users can upvote links (one vote per link and user)
  • Realtime updates when other users upvote a link or create a new one

Video: GraphQL w/ Laravel & Vue by Andre Madarang

What’s inside:

We take a look at using GraphQL with Laravel and Vue.js. In this first part, we take a look at the GitHub API to see some of the problems that GraphQL solves over a traditional REST API.

We then take a look at the Lighthouse PHP package to work with GraphQL within Laravel. We take a look at the tutorial app which implements a blog. We get familiar with GraphQL tools like GraphiQL and GraphQL Playground.

We then take a look at Vue Apollo for our GraphQL client on the front-end. We take a look at the basics and start communicating with our backend.

JAVA

Getting started with GraphQL Java and Spring Boot @graphql-java.com by Andreas Marek

What's inside:

  • GraphQL in 3 minutes
  • GraphQL Java Overview
  • Our example API: getting book details
  • Create a Spring Boot app
  • Schema
  • DataFetchers
    • Source of the data
    • Book DataFetcher
    • Author DataFetcher
    • Default DataFetchers
  • Try out the API
  • Complete example source code and more information

Graphql-scala introduction @HowToGraphQL by Mariusz Nosiński

What’s inside:

  • Scala Scala language
  • Akka HTTP Web server to handle HTTP requests.
  • Sangria A library for GraphQL execution
  • Slick A Database query and access library.
  • H2 Database In-memory database.
  • Graphiql A simple GraphQL console to play with.
  • Giter8 A project templating tool for Scala.

RUBY

Graphql-ruby introduction @HowToGraphQL by Radoslav Stankov

What’s inside:

  • Ruby on Rails: the most popular library for building applications in Ruby
  • GraphQL Gem: the most popular library for building GraphQL applications
  • GraphiQL: An in-browser IDE for exploring GraphQL, which comes bundled with GraphQL Gem

Building APIs with Ruby on Rails and GraphQL @sitepoint by Léonard Hetsch

What's inside:

  • Creating the Project
  • Building the GraphQL Schema
  • Going Further

NODE

Super Simple GraphQL with Node @scotch.io by Chimezie Enyinnaya

What's inside:

  • Prerequisites
  • What is GraphQL?
  • How does it work?
  • Setting up the database
  • Creating models and migrations
  • Creating the GraphQL server
  • Defining the GraphQL Schema
  • Creating the resolvers
  • Testing our GraphQL server
  • Conclusion

Graphql-node introduction @HowToGraphQL by Maira Bello

What’s inside:

  • graphql-yoga: Fully-featured GraphQL server with focus on easy setup, performance & great developer experience. It is built on top of Express, apollo-server, graphql-js and more.
  • Prisma: Prisma replaces traditional ORMs. Use the Prisma client to implement your GraphQL resolvers and simplify database access
  • GraphQL Playground: “GraphQL IDE” that allows to interactively explore the functionality of a GraphQL API by sending queries and mutations to it. It’s somewhat similar to Postman which offers comparable functionality for REST APIs. Among other things, a GraphQL Playground…
    • … auto-generates a comprehensive documentation for all available API operations.
    • … provides an editor where you can write queries, mutations & subscriptions, with auto-completion(!) and syntax highlighting.
    • … lets you easily share your API operations.

Build a GraphQL server for Node.js, using PostgreSQL/MySQL by Lee Benson

What's inside:

How to write a GraphQL server for Node.js from scratch, with PostgreSQL / MySQL as a data store. Explores basic queries, mapping relationships to GraphQL, and mutation (i.e. "write" APIs).

APOLLO

How to build a GraphQL server by Apollo @apollographql.com

What's inside:

This is a tutorial for Apollo Server and Apollo Engine — how to build a GraphQL server that connects to multiple backends: a SQL database, a MongoDB database and a REST endpoint. We’ll be combining all of them to build a very basic blog with authors, posts and views.

Learn how to build fullstack apps with Apollo @apollographql.com

What's inside:

  • Introduction
  • Build a schema
  • Hook up your data sources
  • Write your graph's resolvers
  • Run your graph in production
  • Connect your API to a client
  • Fetch data with queries
  • Update data with mutations
  • Manage local state

Getting started with GraphQL & Apollo on iOS @raywenderlich.com By Nikolas Burk

What's inside:

  • Getting Started
  • Why GraphQL?
  • Using GraphQL On iOS with Apollo
  • Interacting with GraphQL
  • Preparing Your GraphQL Server
  • Entering Initial Conference Data
  • Configuring Xcode and Setting Up the Apollo iOS Client
  • Instantiate the ApolloClient
  • Creating Your Attendee and Querying the Conference List
  • Writing Your First Mutation
  • Querying All Conferences
  • Displaying Conference Details
  • Automatic UI Updates When Changing the Attending Status
  • Where to Go From Here?

PYTHON

Graphql-python @HowToGraphQL by Jonatas Baldin

What’s inside:

In this tutorial, you’ll implement your own GraphQL server by developing a Hackernews clone using Graphene and Graphene-Django.

  • Introduction
  • Getting Started
  • Queries
  • Mutations
  • Authentication
  • Links and Voting
  • Error Handling
  • Filtering
  • Pagination
  • Relay
  • Summary

ELIXIR

Graphql-elixir introduction @HowToGraphQL by Ben Wilson

What’s inside:

  • Server
  • Testing
    • GraphiQL: Extremely useful tool for quickly testing GraphQL apis. By the end of this tutorial you should be able to update your previous frontend code to replace the Graphcool endpoint and point to your new server instead, but until then it’ll be easier for us to test the api through GraphiQL. Among other things, it:
      • Generates a comprehensive documentation of all your available queries and mutations.
      • Provides a text editor where you can build requests, with syntax highlighting and autocomplete.
      • Displays the server’s responses.

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