At StepZen, we've been working hard to make building GraphQL APIs for all your Data as easy as possible. Every month the StepZen team shares the latest updates about the product with the community. This month's update includes sending GraphQL API requests from your terminal, more capabilities for our Snowflake connector, support for all GraphQL APIs in the dashboard, and much more!

Watch the recording of the February 2023 Community Update on YouTube. Or scroll down to read the highlights.

Watch a recording of the February 2023 Community Update

Sending GraphQL API requests from your terminal

We introduced a new command to the StepZen CLI: stepzen request. With this command, you can make GraphQL API requests directly from your terminal. It's easier to use than, for example, cURL and supports subscriptions too.

With stepzen request you can simplify the following cURL command:

curl https://YOUR_ACCOUNT.stepzen.net/api/hello-world/__graphql \
  --header "Authorization: Apikey $(stepzen whoami --apikey)" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data-raw '{
    "query": "query SampleQuery { __schema { description queryType { fields {name} } } }"
  }'

To:

stepzen request 'query SampleQuery {
  __schema { description queryType { fields {name} } }
}'

The CLI supports executing queries, mutations, and subscriptions. The tool allows you to include variables in requests, customize the HTTP headers, and even read operations directly from a file. When using stepzen request, the CLI outputs the response in JSON format and sets an exit code based on whether the response contains any GraphQL errors. The tool allows you to include variables in requests, making it more flexible for practical use than cURL.

Import Snowflake using the CLI

Last month we announced our Snowflake connector, which lets you connect to a Snowflake warehouse from a GraphQL API deployed to StepZen. We've been improving the connector's capabilities by making it possible to import a Snowflake warehouse and generate a GraphQL schema based on its contents using the StepZen CLI.

To create an instant GraphQL API to read your data from Snowflake, run the following command:

stepzen import snowflake

This command will create a GraphQL schema containing your data types in Snowflake. You can deploy this GraphQL schema by running the following:

stepzen start

This command will deploy the GraphQL schema and get a single, flexible API to retrieve data from Snowflake. If you need to become more familiar with Snowflake, it is a secure, fully managed service for easy loading, integrating, analyzing, and sharing of your data. With near-unlimited concurrency, it is user-friendly and powerful enough to handle your crucial workloads.

Support for all GraphQL APIs in the dashboard

Recently we integrated GraphiQL into the StepZen Dashboard, giving you one place to explore your GraphQL APIs. In the latest update, we've added support to query all GraphQL APIs from GraphQL Explorer, even when they aren't built using StepZen. This way you can use query builder and code exporter for all your GraphQL APIs.

In this blog post, we've outlined some (public) GraphQL APIs you can start exploring from the StepZen Dashboard.

Fresh, weekly content

Every week we post fresh GraphQL content on our blog and YouTube channel around GraphQL, building GraphQL APIs with StepZen and using GraphQL using the latest tools and programming languages.

Some of the highlights from last month are:

See you next month!

Keep an eye out for new features and more integrations on our Twitter page and Discord community. We will see you next month for the StepZen Community Update of March 2023. Livestreamed on YouTube and Twitch or available on YouTube afterward.