{"id":8685,"date":"2018-09-11T07:00:12","date_gmt":"2018-09-11T15:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/?p=8685"},"modified":"2018-07-18T06:34:13","modified_gmt":"2018-07-18T14:34:13","slug":"software-development-facebooks-graphql-offers-an-alternative-to-rest-apis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/software-development-facebooks-graphql-offers-an-alternative-to-rest-apis\/","title":{"rendered":"Software Development: Facebook’s GraphQL Offers an Alternative to REST APIs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Web APIs are evolving.\u00a0 REST has become the standard for building web-based APIs, replacing earlier technologies like SOAP.\u00a0 REST proved itself to be lightweight and flexible.<\/p>\n

There’s an alternative to REST that is becoming more popular: GraphQL<\/a>.\u00a0 GraphQL is the API system created by Facebook.\u00a0 It is strongly typed and has the advantage over REST in that it allows the developer much greater control about exactly what data it needs.\u00a0 It also is good at aggregating data from multiple sources. As a result, GraphQL tends to be more efficient and structured relative to REST.<\/p>\n

The GraphQL documentation<\/a> describes the API system as follows: “GraphQL is a query language for your API, and a server-side runtime for executing queries by using a type system you define for your data. GraphQL isn\u2019t tied to any specific database or storage engine and is instead backed by your existing code and data.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0Sid Sijbrandij<\/a>, GitLab founder and CEO, said that<\/a> “we\u2019re going GraphQL, we\u2019re replacing everything with GraphQL.”<\/p>\n

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Web APIs are evolving.\u00a0 REST has become the standard for building web-based APIs, replacing earlier technologies like SOAP.\u00a0 REST proved itself to be lightweight and flexible. There’s an alternative to REST that is becoming more popular: GraphQL.\u00a0 GraphQL is the…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more ›<\/a><\/div>\n

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