Joey AnuffIn this blog, we walk through a project to build a personal playlist exporter that migrates playlists off of Spotify. It involves setting up the Spotify OAuth flow in Remix and transforming multi-call REST sequences into concise, single-call GraphQL requests.
Lucia CerchieAnnouncing StepZen's Postman Collection of pre-built SaaS APIs provided in the StepZen GraphQL Studio!
Roy DerksWhat's new with StepZen this month? PlanetScale integration, a new community tutorial, StepZen for federation, and a sneak peek for product updates. Here's the roll-up.
Victory NwaniThis tutorial describes how to use StepZen to transform two REST endpoints from the AlpacaDB Trading API and build a single GraphQL endpoint. Then learn how to consume that GraphQL endpoint in Svelte to create a personal stock trading app.
Leonardo LosovizLeo makes the case for supporting generic error codes in the GraphQL spec, arguing that it would help enforce the correctness of all required validations by GraphQL servers. And in preparation for doing the work, he tracks down all the errors that can be produced.
Lucia CerchieLearn how to use StepZen to execute queries conditionally and avoid making unnecessary requests.
Roy DerksPlanetScale is one of the most popular cloud-based, serverless databases with MySQL support. Using StepZen you can get an instant GraphQL API for your PlanetScale database, that gets deployed for you in the cloud.
Anant JhingranOur customers often have data lakes or data warehouses — one place where analytical workloads are executed against a global truth of data. Many have a master data management (MDM) strategy for "slower moving data." But data lakes and MDMs are not the whole story. A GraphQL data layer — a graph of graphs — can help you achieve a single global truth for all your data.
Anant JhingranIt is possible to build a GraphQL system where both the setup and the execution of interactions are declarative. This blog describes how building subgraphs and composing a supergraph from them can all be done declaratively - leading to simpler and cleaner code to write and maintain, and delivering all the benefits of a better runtime.
Leonardo LosovizThe information I've gathered from the spec includes what is described there and also what is not there (but we could reasonably expect). I've also retrieved some information from GraphQL's GitHub repo, where we can appreciate what features are currently missing in GraphQL and which ones will eventually be supported.
Roy DerksWhat's new with StepZen this month? Web3, HarperDB integration, converting REST APIs to GraphQL from your terminal, etc. Here's the roll-up.
Samuel HillWeb3 community members are Twitter-crazed and Discord-server fanatics, and everyone in the community cannot get enough of it. The craze started with Bitcoin, then the broader crypto networks, and now the technology building around these decentralized networks termed "web3".
Roy DerksHarperDB is a SQL- and NoSQL-based database that you can access using their REST API, but by using StepZen you can query HarperDB using GraphQL instead. With just a few commands from the StepZen CLI you can transform the HarperDB REST API into GraphQL, as you'll learn in this post.
Lucia CerchieGetting your API into a production-ready state means taking several things into account, like pagination, performance, security. StepZen helps you create and deploy a GraphQL API for any datasource quickly and scalably.
Roy DerksThis article explores the roles that GraphQL can play in a microservices architecture. You can save your organization time adopting GraphQL for every microservice. GraphQL can be the data layer (or API gateway) that serves as the communication layer between microservices . . .
Leonardo LosovizA new PR on the GraphQL spec will bring support for directives on directives. Its motivation: to enable us to use directives @deprecate and @specifiedBy also on directives. This blog explores other potential use cases for directives that transform the behavior of an existing directive.
Lucia CerchieLearn to convert a REST endpoint into a deployed GraphQL API in one command.
Anant JhingranDatabase systems use declarations that make the experience of both the setup and interactive side amazing. In contrast, most GraphQL systems make only the interactive side declarative. The setup side is complex, and worse, the execution of interactions is suboptimal. This blog explores how it is possible to build a GraphQL system where both sides are declarative.
Joey AnuffDeveloping animated layouts for a web app can require a lot of browser reloads to get things right and that can cause quota-expensive queries. In this post we explore using Remix, Framer, and StepZen to develop layout animations without blowing past API quotas.
Sridhar RajagopalanPerformance is an important issue for APIs. It's well understood that user engagement with an application drops quickly with increases in latency. This blog explores the important metrics for GraphQL APIs, and introduces a GraphQL Benchmark tool that will help you track your GraphQL performance.
Leonardo LosovizPrompted by an interesting question on the GraphQL subreddit, this blog explores whether it's possible to tell the GraphQL server to flatten the shape of a response. And, if so, how to do it?
Roy DerksWhat's new with StepZen this month? An updated "getting started" experience, new features for your StepZen dashboard, mocking capabilities, and more. Here's the roll-up.
Lucia CerchieLearn how to use StepZen’s @mock directive to create a frontend development workflow.
Isaac GarciaHandling in-person events usually involve "busy work"; a back-and-forth exchange between attendees and organizers. "Busy work" is tedious and prone to human error. The goal of this application is to limit the back-and-forth of organizers with attendees while still maintaining a secure and quick event check-in process.
Carlos EberhardtThis blog explores how to build a custom GraphQL API using MongoDB Atlas’ Data API and another REST service. You can get the ease of the built-in GraphQL API with the flexibility of the hand-coded GraphQL API and build a custom MongoDB GraphQL API without having to write and maintain code.
Bill MaggsAnnouncing the launch of a simplified Getting Started Experience. With a quick-start wizard and in just three commands you can quickly turn your database or REST endpoint into a GraphQL API running securely on StepZen’s highly performant, globally distributed service.
Anthony CampoloSvelteKit is a new Svelte metaframework for building web applications with filesystem-based routing. It is inspired by Next.js and is well suited for connecting to a GraphQL endpoint built and running on StepZen. In this example we build a blog using SvelteKit, StepZen, and the DEV API.
Joey AnuffHow best to hook up a GraphQL endpoint to a Remix app, preferably with no external dependencies? That's the question I set out to answer with this project. With a few tricks culled from recent tutorials by GraphQL blogger Jamie Barton, JS live-streamer Jason Lengstorf, and advanced FE YouTuber Jack Herrington, I was surprised to learn how little time and code it takes to make it happen.
Carlos EberhardtThe GraphQL ecosystem is maturing and adoption accelerating. Developers have choices - tools and libraries that solve different sets of problems or solve problems in different ways. Let's explore a few.
Roy DerksOne of the main features of the GraphQL specification is its type system, including nullability. Nullability is important in the type system of GraphQL as it determines whether a field can be null or non-nullable.
Leonardo LosovizLearn about the upcoming oneof input object in GraphQL. See how useful it will become for simplifying schemas by making queries more powerful.
Anthony CampoloStepZen’s JSON2SDL tool transforms a JSON response into GraphQL by generating a schema in GraphQL’s Schema Definition Language. In this example, we’ll look at JSON responses from the Stripe API and convert them into GraphQL schemas.
Leonardo LosovizIs it possible to check if a value returned by a GraphQL query is empty or not? This article explains how to tackle this problem in GraphQL.
Roy DerksMoving from a traditional API architecture like REST towards GraphQL can be a challenge. When moving to GraphQL using StepZen, you can make this straightforward while also leveraging the investments in your current REST APIs.
Leonardo LosovizThere are several resources advising best practices for designing schemas for GraphQL APIs. These will lead us most of the way in the design of the schema, but often we may also bump into issues that are not generic. This article describes what to consider for several decisions the author had to make when designing a GraphQL API.
Lucia CerchieGraphQL directives add additional configuration to GraphQL schemas. If you use them with an eye to reducing the amount of code you have to write, you can save time and effort. In this article we explain why we gravitate towards them.
Joey AnuffIn combining data from Spotify and Google's Knowledge Graph API using StepZen's @materializer directive, we encounter a common headache with mixed APIs: their diversity of authorization requirements. In this post, Joey illustrates a simple way to handle the basic Client Credentials Flow using a different custom directive - @sequence.
Roy DerksGraphQL is the perfect technology to bring your microservices together. With StepZen you can create this datalayer in a declaritive way using GraphQL directives, without having to write any resolvers.
Dan Debrunner, Anant JhingranFederation and schema stitching are some of the terms used for describing how GraphQL APIs can be combined into a unified layer. This article explores what’s needed to build a unified GraphQL layer, and the various approaches to building the federation layer that many businesses need in order to optimize build-time and runtime for developers and teams.
Lucia CerchieA common problem in API design is how to make the needs of backend and frontend developers meet. We explore how GraphQL and StepZen make this easier.
Leonardo LosovizWhen a GraphQL schema is static (i.e. it doesn't change based on runtime conditions), there is a performance gain to be had by caching the results of an introspection query the first time it's accessed, and retrieving the cached response from then on. This blog describes how to produce this cache by routing the request through a CDN.
Sridhar RajagopalanIn the world of software architecture there are many “-ilities” that we must take into consideration with every project. Here we discuss StepZen's approach to availability and overall considerations for ensuring the system is up and running.
Anant JhingranStepZen is proud to partner with Google Cloud to enable next-generation API Management for GraphQL. Together we provide the best approach for developers to build and manage GraphQL and REST APIs - a set of building blocks, assembled, and delivered as-a-service.
Joey AnuffWith StepZen's pre-built schemas for Spotify and Knowledge Graph APIs, and a custom GraphQL directive (@materializer), this mashup takes advantage of the knowledge base of 500B+ facts on 5B+ entities to add album, artist, and track descriptions in fields in a Spotify_Track schema. The new fields fill themselves with data from the Knowledge Graph using StepZen’s @materializer directive.
Lucia CerchieSpend a few minutes a day from Dec 1-25 to learn to build an API with StepZen, consume it from a Next frontend, and deploy it to Netlify!
Leonardo LosovizThe GraphQL Working Group is tackling union of scalars as inputs, under RFC: GraphQL Input Union, as the first step in supporting dynamic settings in GraphQL. Here our guest blogger, Leo, explores ways to handle dynamic settings while we wait for the RFC: GraphQL Input Union to be resolved.
Anant JhingranGraphQL APIs are excellent for frontend developers, providing acceleration for application development and an improved developer experience. However, new challenges for the security of these APIs arise. Here we explore finding the right balance for GraphQL API technology on a continuum between safety and progress.
Lucia CerchieLearn how to use StepZen's JSON2SDL tool. Paste JSON in, copy SDL out.
Sridhar RajagopalanThe ability to delivery continuously and get changes of all types into production and into the hands of our users, safely and quickly, is an imperative for modern startups and established enterprises alike. This article describes how we balance shipping quickly and running a reliable service at StepZen.
Anthony CampoloIn this example, we use Google's Cloud Natural Language API and the Dev.to API to analyze the sentiment of blog comments.
Lucia CerchieEliminate the pain of re-coding your portfolio site every time it needs an update by using StepZen's dynamic, low-code solution that deploys to Netlify.
Bill MaggsAnnouncing the launch of StepZen GraphQL Studio. This intuitive and streamlined GraphQL IDE delivers a suite of popular and useful APIs that StepZen has transformed into flexible GraphQL schemas that can be used individually or in combinations, and makes GraphQL significantly easier to adopt and use for any size project.
Joey AnuffWith StepZen and Postman workspaces side-by-side, I was able to achieve something remarkable: a localhost and live endpoint serving custom-aggregated YouTube-Data-as-GraphQL, after barely a day-and-a-half of experimentation.
Samuel HillHandling event listeners and DOM tracking in a react application. React Hooks take control of state management, and when implemented properly, can empower a product team to analyze features and functionality of a web platform with ease.
Roy DerksThere are different ways to bring together GraphQL microservices, like schema stitching and Federation. But these solutions aren't the most optimal when you want to create a data layer or gateway for GraphQL. Instead, StepZen offers a true SDL-first approach that works for all microservices.
Lucia Cerchie, Carlos EberhardtWe'll look at API design and how to create a clean API. This theme has roots in the early days of REST API design and continues through GraphQL API design. Let's take a look at how a GraphQL layer can be a mode of communication, as well as a way to martial multiple endpoints. You'll also learn a few pointers on creating clean GraphQL APIs in general.
Anant JhingranGraphQL APIs are excellent for frontend developers, providing acceleration for application development and an improved developer experience. However, new challenges for the security of these APIs arise. Here we explore finding the right balance for GraphQL API technology on a continuum between safety and progress.
Roy DerksGraphQL and microservices architectures are perfectly compatible. You can use GraphQL as a data layer and combine data from all these services into one universal API. And StepZen can be used as this API data layer.
Lucia CerchieLearn what it means for GraphQL to be a runtime under the hood.
Roy DerksDocumentation is important to make your API understandable to your users. Writing documentation for GraphQL APIs is a bit different, as you'll learn in this article.
Roy DerksThere are many different flavors in creating the perfect GraphQL server, ranging from SDL-first to code-first or even generated solutions. This article explores different approaches and a solution to create a GraphQL API without writing any code.
Anant JhingranYou can always read docs; make SQL, cURL, or GraphQL calls; and learn the backend capabilities by trying them. Why bother about introspection? It is the way for a program to build something extraordinary on top of it. It could be Swagger docs, GraphiQL, a database optimization program, a change management tool, or another programmatic approach.
Leonardo LosovizOur guest blogger Leo is back to explore a hot topic around GraphQL directives. Looking at how directives are cateorized as query-type or schema-type and how important their functionalities are. So let's discuss the pros and cons and query-type directives that modify return values.
Anthony CampoloSometimes we need to mix and match data from CMSs and other data sources. With StepZen, you can easily mix data from an external CMS with your own project by incorporating StepZen’s custom directives.
Lucia CerchieYou can send a GraphQL query on stepzen.com/stickers and receive awesome swag-- learn how we built the page!
Leonardo LosovizIn this post, we learn how to allow an application to use two different GraphQL servers in a similar fashion. We adapt an application based on WPGraphQL to also work with the plugin GraphQL API for WordPress. This task involves adapting all field names and parameters in the GraphQL queries, converting from WPGrapQL's to the GraphQL API for WP's schema.
Lucia Cerchie, Anthony CampoloLearn about the GitHub repositories we've opened up to Hacktoberfest 2021 contributions.
Lucia CerchieLearn how to add a GraphQL API and a MySQL database to your StepZen data layer.
Helen WhelanIn a recent episode of "Learn With Jason", StepZen's Carlos Eberhardt and Netlify's Jason Lengstorf discussed the pros and cons of GraphQL for developers, and showed us how StepZen works to easily let you build a GraphQL API on a number of data sources!
Leonardo LosovizGraphiQL provides an editor to compose GraphQL queries, and a way to visualize the response, and browse the schema. In this article, Leonardo Losoviz explores some clever ways to modify the content inside the GraphiQL editor via JavaScript, allowing website visitors to execute a different GraphQL query by clicking an HTML button.
Anant JhingranAs the backend developer or API provider, you do not want just to build out APIs, you want to build out APIs that are intuitive and easy to explore, test drive and learn. Here we argue that GraphQL is the right solution, not just for the frontend developer, but for the people whose jobs are to corral and carefully expose backends.
Samuel HillThe expiration of access tokens is a security feature of the OAuth Authorization process. Using a custom GraphQL directive, StepZen lets developers continously keeping these tokens secure and up to date.
Anant JhingranTo speed app development, the divide between the frontend and the backend must be bridged. Databases providing GraphQL interfaces will bridge a part of the divide. But a middleware that speaks GraphQL on the top and native languages on the bottom will round out the solution.
Brian RinaldiHow to build a GraphQL API that uses StepZen's custom rest, dbquery and sequence directives to complete a complex sequence of queries within in a single GraphQL query request.
Leonardo LosovizUsing the export directive to pass dynamic data from one query to the next and manipulate it in order to complete a complex sequence of requests via a single GraphQL query.
Samuel HillCreate a Login UI/UX experience with the Google Sign-In API on a React Native mobile app. Once a user successfully logs in, we are writing a mutation in StepZen to pass the login credentials to FaunaDB.
Anant JhingranWhile databases are still a critical part of the application stack, there is a gap between the way data is provided and the way frontend applications want to consume it. GraphQL can bridge that gap by being a middle layer between the frontend and the backend.
Anant Jhingran, Lucia CerchieImplementing GraphQL doesn't mean abandoning your REST ecosystem-- far from it! Learn how adding a GraphQL layer capitalizes on the power of REST.
Leonardo LosovizGraphQL is flexible enough to allow for some creative solutions. In this article, Leonardo Losoviz explores some out-of-the-box ways to use GraphQL for resource based endpoints, schema stitching and manipulating content.
Anthony CampoloStepZen's custom sequence directive allows for multiple queries to be executed in a sequence, one after the other to return a single result. In this example we will see how to use the sequence directive to query three APIs.
Lucia CerchieLearn how to add any GraphQL API to your StepZen data layer, by autogenerating your GraphQL schemas and deploying them to your StepZen endpoint.
Leonardo LosovizTips for mapping an existing application's data model into a GraphQL schema, using WordPress as an example.
Brian RinaldiWe can leverage StepZen to pull data from a variety of data sources and convert that data into Markdown, YAML and JSON data files using the new stepzen-content-pull npm package.
Lucia CerchieLearn how to layer a GraphQL API, accessible via a StepZen endpoint, on your MySQL database.
Anant JhingranGraphQL allows frontend developers to interact using their concepts and for the GraphQL layer to mediate with the backend implementations. GraphQL as the frontend API, as well as a few other constructs — interfaces, routing, and declarative specifications — give developers the tools to leverage the powerful backend-for-frontend pattern for decoupling.
Leonardo LosovizThere are some very promising proposals to improve the GraphQL spec under consideration. Leonardo Losoviz takes a deeper look at five of the most promising ones and what they'd mean for the future of GraphQL.
Lucia CerchieHere, we show you how to use fragments to clean up repeated code in your GraphQL schema.
Lucia CerchieLearn what scalar types are in GraphQL and what custom GraphQL scalar types StepZen provides to you.
Lucia CerchieAn interview with Eve Porcello, who shares her view on the state of GraphQL and the JAMstack.
Leonardo LosovizOne of GraphQL's key benefits over REST is the ways that improves the developer experience. This post explores the key benefits GraphQL offers over REST in terms of developer experience.
Lucia CerchieLearn how to use StepZen and GraphQL mutations to generate QR Codes with Google Sheets.
David GriffinSee how freelance developer, David Griffin, turned a WordPress blog with Cloudinary assets into a mobile app using StepZen and React Native.
Joel VartyAs we look ahead to a joint Agility CMS and StepZen webinar to discuss how you can power up your Jamstack sites with GraphQL APIs and Headless CMS, we are thrilled to welcome Joel Varty to the StepZen blog to share his perspective on page management in Headless CMSs.
Leonardo LosovizGraphQL directives are one of GraphQL's most powerful features, enabling custom capabilities that are not yet supported by the GraphQL spec, and offering a glimpse of what GraphQL may look like in the future.
Leonardo LosovizThe usual debate is REST versus GraphQL, but are the two really that different after all? Let's look at the similarities and differences to understand which is best for your project.
Anant JhingranFrontend developers are asked to build engaging online experiences. They need data from the backends. They must perform actions against backends. GraphQL APIs are fast becoming the language of modern app development. But who builds those APIs? Are they built quickly or are frontend developers left waiting? Who runs and manages the APIs?
Anant JhingranTo build today's web apps, you likely need data from a database. At the same time, GraphQL is playing an increasingly important role in modernizing data access to accelerate web development. See how your GraphQL view of your data can match the implementation - a set of database tables and joins.
Anthony CampoloThe RedwoodJS Example Todo is one of two canonical RedwoodJS applications, each of which use Prisma Client to connect to a PostgreSQL database. However, we can easily swap out Prisma and connect to another database. This article describes another option - how to use StepZen to swap in Airtable for the database in the Example Todo app.
Leonardo LosovizWalk through how to use two popular GraphQL clients, GraphiQL and GraphQL Voyager, via screenshots to explore their features and usage.
Sridhar RajagopalanUsing the StepZen Netlify build plugin, the deployment of a single GraphQL endpoint, built on StepZen, is simple and seamless, and happens within your Netlify build.
Anthony CampoloBuild a site that pulls data from the Shopify API using StepZen and connects it to Redwood's API side which is auto-configured with a GraphQL handler that can be deployed with serverless functions enabling secure API routes.
Brian RinaldiGraphQL directives are a powerful aspect of the GraphQL spec that you may not even be aware of. They provide extensibility to to a GraphQL API. This post looks at what GraphQL directives are, how they are used and some examples of directives in use.
Helen WhelanAlong with the mintbean.io team, we wrapped a GraphQL:Learn 'n Hack Hackathon last week. Developers had a blast building with GraphQL and we loved working with everybody. Here are some of the projects that developers built.
Lucia CerchieHere, we give you an in-depth look at how you can easily use StepZen to connect your MySQL database to a GraphQL API.
Anthony CampoloThis example showcases Next.js ability to statically generate blog post by querying a GraphQL API built with StepZen that returns blog posts from WordPress and images from Cloudinary.
Brian RinaldiA step-by-step guide demonstrating how to build a GraphQL API that pulls from multiple REST endpoints using StepZen.
Lucia CerchieLearn how to use StepZen’s @materializer directive to reduce the amount of code you have to write when you’re connecting your GraphQL API to a MySQL database.
Anant JhingranAPIs are a powerful way to fetch and combine data during static and dynamic builds. We believe that the potential of APIs in Jamstack applications is fully realized when APIs are easy to build and run and help developers seamlessly harmonize multiple data sources.
Brian RinaldiCreate a developer portfolio featuring content pulled from your DEV.to blog posts and GitHub profile and projects using Next.js and StepZen.
Helen WhelanA new library of API template schemas make it easy for developers to build a unified GraphQL API starting from a template. Save weeks of development time! No need to build a GraphQL server, understand resolvers, GraphQL stitching etc.
Anthony CampoloHow to build a React frontend from scratch and query a GraphQL API with Apollo Client
Anant JhingranWhat does a developer need to think through when deciding whether to build, own, and operate a GraphQL API service?
Brian RinaldiLet's explore the BFF pattern, how it applies to Jamstack applications and how to make it easier to implement.
Carlos EberhardtSecuring API routes for Jamstack sites is important. Here's one way to do it.
Brian RinaldiExploring three popular GraphQL JavaScript client libraries that you can use to connect to a GraphQL API in the browser or in Node.js.
Helen WhelanWe've added new capabilities that make it easy to connect your GraphQL endpoint with any REST data source, using the @rest directive.
Brian RinaldiA look at the intertwined evolution of the Jamstack and GraphQL and how popular Jamstack tools are built upon a GraphQL foundation.
Brian RinaldiA step-by-step guide to building a custom GraphQL API using StepZen that connects to a real MySQL backend.
Brian RinaldiA GraphQL query is just a standard HTTP request, no special libraries needed. Let's look at how to create one in JavaScript and Node.js.
Carlos EberhardtWouldn't it be great if it were as easy to create a GraphQL API from a Google Sheet as it is to share a Google Sheet with someone?
Brian RinaldiGraphQL queries are what allow GraphQL to be efficient in how it gets data, by allowing you to express only what you need but also exactly everything you need. In this post, we'll see how.
Anant JhingranStepZen's CEO shares what inspired us to create StepZen and the complex problems we are working to solve for developers.
Anant Jhingran, Sridhar RajagopalanTwo of StepZen's founders explore the benefits that made them decide to build StepZen using a Software as a Service (SaaS) model rather than a container model.
Anant JhingranGraphQL is a relatively new technology but it offers enormous benefits over the traditional RESTful solutions for frontend and backend developers.