The bad reputation of REST comes from 'so called REST-APIs' to a very large degree, because their resources are merley a representation of database-enitites. However, REST does have challenges. I have been working with GraphQL and microservices. Rather, you should plan to use GaphQL for future applications. GraphQL offers several advantages over REST, which are as follows: Resolution to over-fetching and under-fetching . If you need caching and monitoring facilities in your API, use REST. To work more productively with GraphQL, we recommend adopting some of the REST-based best practices we’ve developed over years of experience building developer programs. In general, selecting GraphQL or REST is a difficult task because both are good in their way. GraphQL is not the typical library that is tied to a specific language or database, as you can use it in any programming language. GraphQL focuses more on retrieving elements (though it supports more), whereas REST is used to give web services a structure. REST is an API design architecture that has become a norm for implementing web services in the last few years. For approach #2, in fact that's the way I choose, because it's much easier than maintaining the annoying API gateway manually. With this way you ca... If you have anything more complicated, such as needijg live data, or more complicated endpoints, go graphql. However, REST APIs have shown to be too inflexible to keep up with the rapidly changing requirements of the clients that access them. The latest version of GitHub's API is published using GraphQL. Clients can ask for exactly what they need in a single query rather than making multiple queries to different REST API endpoints. Both GraphQL and REST rely on communicating on the server via functions. Normally without GraphQL you will be fetching th e entire response data via the REST API endpoint and then query out what you really need for your application. In GraphQL, there’s one version of the graph. The registry behaves similar to that of a version control system like Git, and becomes the central place that keeps track of the current state of the graph. Request and response are directly related. GraphQL, on the other hand, is a query language, a specification, and a set of tools that operates over a single endpoint using HTTP. Although GraphQL is very useful to solve complex data exchange, it is “over-engineered” to use it for simple or standard use cases. GraphQL works best for the following scenarios: 1. Why and When to Use GraphQL. Why GraphQL over REST? A few simple express endpoints are way easier than graphql. Over time, nearly everybody got used to – but in recent years, an interesting alternative has emerged. If your API is intended to be used on a mobile application, use GraphQL since it offers better bandwidth usage. At the same time, GraphQL is much more lightweight, thus reducing the network payload. If we compare GraphQL and SOAP, we will see that both use single endpoint URLs to fetch or modify the data. In this video, I discuss the use cases to use GraphQL over REST API. If you need 2 or 3 simple endpoints, just use rest. GraphQL provides a better learning curve as compared to REST. GraphQL has many advantages over REST. Existence of GraphQL and REST APIs together. As GraphQL is just another POST endpoint, the REST APIs and GraphQL APIs can live together in one API. This will also help if you want to slowly migrate to GraphQL without removing all the REST APIs. I'm trying to understand where GraphQL is most suitable to use within a Microservice architecture. Then migrate your resolvers to hit your data directly. This leads to a developmental effort in order to achieve caching. There is some debate about having only 1 GraphQL schema that works as API Gateway proxying the request to the targeted microservices and coercing their response. Maintaining a coherent governance, defining efficient processes and ensuring final consumers leverage the data available in the organization is a challenge. GraphQL is protocol agnostic, it means that when using GraphQL over HTTP, you’ll always get 200 OK response, whether the query was OK or not. Below are some reasons why GraphQL could be a bad fit for your project when compared to a REST architecture: 1 GrapQL queries could cause performance issues 2 REST can do much of what GraphQL does 3 GraphQL makes some tasks more complex 4 It’s easier to use a web cache with REST than with GraphQL 5 The way GraphQL schemas work could be a problem It is crucial to be mindful of the fact that GraphQL and REST are not the same. This article recommends approach #1. See the below image too, taken from the mentioned article: Neither the developer nor the application needs to have knowledge of how those third parties work internally. To question 1, Intuit acknowledged the power of GraphQL few years back when it announced moving to One Intuit API ecosystem (https://www.slideshare... It uses HTTP to get data and perform various operations (POST, GET, PUT, and DELETE) in JSON format, allowing better and faster parsing of data. However, GraphQL allows repeating a query several times and requesting details – in the long run, this is what prevents over-etching. Normally, Relay will send its GraphQL queries to a server over HTTP. As of mid 2019 the solution for the 1st Approach has now the name "Schema Federation" coined by the Apollo people (Previously this was often referr... The GraphQL layer can specifically optimise queries over the RESTful APIs, minimizing API calls necessary to resolve a query. In GraphQL API, the list of fields (considering both the Mutation and the Query types) is identical to the list of endpoints in a REST API. GraphQL vs REST: Practical Examples and Nuances. This will also help if you want to slowly migrate to GraphQL without removing all the REST APIs. You should be open to using the best tools for the job, which may include both GraphQL and REST. Using a client-side schema with Relay#. Software Architecture Videoshttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQnljOFTspQXNP6mQc... Watch later Share Over the last years, REST has been a widely used API design. It’s also worth noting that, in REST, the structure of the request object is defined on the server. Reorganize your data stores, use a bunch of Redis, and hope clients are caching too. GraphQL is flexible and growing in popularity. As of 2019 the best way is to write microservises that implements apollo gateway specification and then glue together these services using a gatewa... GraphQL and REST are able to distinguish when an API is intended to write or to read data. For example, microservices or non-user facing APIs, like APIs exposing data for Business Intelligence or other purposes has no need to provide heavy GraphQL API - after all REST is just HTTP with convention, so, simple to implement and use. Information hiding is commonly knownas the “ability to prevent certain aspects of a software component from being accessible to its clients.” Furthermore, “a common us… 2. Or if this is just a small project, use graphql to learn it. Based on my experience what works for me is a combination of both approaches depending on the... Both make use of frameworks to make communication easier. GraphQL is the better REST Over the past decade, REST has become the standard (yet a fuzzy one) for designing web APIs. Apps for devices such as mobile phones, smartwatches, and IoT devices, where bandwidth usage matters. We built... In RESTful APIs, the language we use for the request … Many companies such as PayPal, Coursera and so on, were looking for an alternative to REST API to build custom solutions. You can view REST API as an architecture pattern, while GraphQL is a technology and a language. Microservices still would use REST / Thrift protocol for communication though. My opinion is the size of the project. The argument over GraphQL vs. REST is raging, and most businesses are torn between the two when it … While the above may make it all seem cut-and-dried, when it comes to choosing between GraphQL and REST, there is also room for nuance and overlap, so let’s dive in deep with some technical examples. This results in over-fetching as well as under-fetching. 2. RESTis probably the most commonly known item in this piece, as it has become very common amongst web APIs. The way it is being described in this question, I believe that using a custom API gateway as an orchestration service can make a lot of sense for c... Whereas, in a REST architecture, the client makes an HTTP request and data is sent as HTTP response, in GraphQL, the client request data with queries. GraphQL. Originally developed as an open-source project by Facebook, GraphQL is now maintained by its growing community. While GraphQL is a query language, REST is an architectural style for designing web services. REST vs GraphQL use case: When Should you use Rest or GraphQL. Both REST and GraphQL use similar approaches to move data and start functions. When to Use GraphQL Over REST: How to Deliver the Right APIs & Experience to Consumers. We can inject @taion's custom relay-local-schema network layer to resolve queries using the schema we just built. About GraphQL Why the need for GraphQL than using normal REST API? It all depends on your data and performance requirements. Yelp publishes its API in GraphQL, as does Shopify. REST is JavaScript-friendly, so it is a perfect choice for Javascript-based applications. Pioneers who have successfully implemented BFFs using GraphQL. GraphQL vs REST: putting the two to the test Nowadays, one of the most frequently used approaches to creating an API is the REST philosophy. GraphQLaims at Data comes from multiple sources across the organization, owned and managed by multiple teams, stored in heterogeneous database backends and located on multiple platforms with complex access policies. The point is if you want to drive client behaviour you have to favor rest, if you don't care what your data is being used for, GraphQL is a viable option. REST has been preferred by many developers to send data over HTTP because they didn't need to install additional software or libraries when creating an API though GraphQL is ordinarily introduced as a technology to replace the legacy of REST APIs. GraphQL is faster than REST because you can easily pick the fields you have to query. Yes, you need to put in the work to implement each resolver, but the explicitness is so liberating. Having your clients talk to multiple GraphQL services (as in approach #2) entirely defeats the purpose of using GraphQL in... Put this code wherever it's … GraphQL, being the latest innovation in the API architecture evolution, combines the strong suites of both SOAP and REST. API Design and Over-fetching. There are many misconceptions and false statements about both GraphQL and REST. The major difference between GraphQL and REST is the manner in which data is sent to the client. It offers some great ideas, such as stateless servers and structured access to resources. GraphQL was created in 2012 by Facebook. It allows for the ease of integration that REST has by having it exposed as a HTTP service, but expands beyond that with query granularity, more natural API usage (RPC style and using business language instead of a combination of a noun with an HTTP method). One of the main benefits of having everything behi... Although tools like Relay give some support for caching they are not as mature as the caching mechanisms used by RESTful services. GraphQL to me is beyond better when compared to REST. In addition, over the last few years, REST has been used to make new APIs, while the focus of GraphQL has been to optimize for performance and flexibility. REST over HTTP uses a whole pile of HTTP conventions that make existing HTTP clients, HTTP cache proxies, etc., all work easily to benefit both API clients and API servers, but with GraphQL… tough. The following use cases are an overkill for GraphQL but are perfect for REST services: 1. Data Fetching with REST vs GraphQL. With a REST API, you would typically gather the data by accessing multiple endpoints. In the example, these could be /users/ endpoint to fetch the initial user data. Secondly, there’s likely to be a /users//posts endpoint that returns all the posts for a user. Using REST-based practices in GraphQL. GraphQL, on the other hand, is a query language, a specification, and a set of tools that operates over a single endpoint using HTTP. Data Warehouses, Data Marts and Data Lakes expose datasets with their own requirements and set of protocols. GraphQL logo GraphQL is a query language for APIs and a server side runtime that executes the queries. You can always point a graphql server at your REST API to start and then update your application over time to use the GQL endpoint. Apart from this, it can cope with higher loads and process data, which is quicker than SOAP. May 28, 2020, Hitesh Baldaniya. The following image can be used to visualize the existence of GraphQL in any application. But in 2015, Facebook released GraphQL to the public, a query language for APIs, and it became an alternative to REST. Definitely approach #1. “Hiding” those details is considered a Software Development best practice. Now by doing this you will require more time and space to load all those unnecessary data as well, GraphQL solves this problem (Over Fetching & … GraphQL can be a lifesaver when building scalable applications. By using GraphQl, you generally end up with a much better API comparatively if you would attempt to build a REST API without understanding its concepts. After all, the lack of REST knowledge resulted in the boom of the so-called REST APIs. I am sure you know the problems associated with the REST API. It's clunky and immutable in terms of the data structure of a response. To keep track of how the graph changes and evolves over time, we register it in a schema registry. REST and GraphQL are in fact complementary, and they are used for specific purposes. The two approaches have a different way of working, and clients will have to implement a certain type of communication, based on the architecture used on the server. 2 We also had similar concerns on the bootstraping a Microservices ecosystem with graphql. And we are able to solve it with Apollo GraphQL. Hence, if your application is load-intensive, REST may be your API of choice. As we have explained above, apps using REST APIs call endpoints, and the entire data in that endpoint will be returned in the JSON format. The fundamental insight that led a team at Facebook to create In addition, over the last few years, REST has been used to make new APIs, while the focus of GraphQL has been to optimize for performance and flexibility. The one I want to address is about the over-fetching. Modern applications usually consume or interact with third-party modules and APIs. This being said, you can also use a combination of GraphQL and REST for a project. As GraphQL is just another POST endpoint, the REST APIs and GraphQL APIs can live together in one API. Existence of GraphQL and REST APIs together. GraphQL is an increasingly popular API query language that unifies multiple endpoints into a single queryable point. REST has been a popular architectural style for designing APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) but in recent years, GraphQL’s popularity is threatening REST’s reign.. Thsts what I'm doing. GraphQL doesn't have support for browser and mobile caching unlike RESTful service which uses native HTTP caching mechanisms. Facebook was working on its own solutions – GraphQL which … Also, given the response/response aspect of HTTP/1.1, REST can be slow. Then finally, ceremoniously put a pillow over your REST API weeping, “goodby old friend”.