July 2017 Summaries

This article discusses the benefits of using TypeScript with Apollo Client, a popular GraphQL client library for React applications. The author shares their personal experience and insights on how they transitioned from Flow to TypeScript, highlighting its advantages in terms of active development, editor integration, and strong tooling. They also provide a step-by-step guide on how to get started with using TypeScript and Apollo Client together, including manually writing types for response data, utilizing polymorphic types for wrapped components, and shaping props with the `props` function. The author emphasizes the importance of type checking in preventing potential production bugs and improving code maintainability.

Apollo Link is a modular GraphQL network stack that allows developers to compose small parts of the network stack to create the desired GraphQL client. The architecture introduces Links, which implement one small part of the network stack, and enables users to execute requests with specific functionalities such as polling, caching, retrying, queuing mutations, offline support, and more. This modular approach will give users an easy get-started experience with a default set of features and the ability to add or remove functionality as needed. Apollo Link is currently in prerelease and can be used today in place of the network interface on the latest Apollo Client or as a standalone library, with the first new feature being the RetryLink. The technology also supports GraphiQL and allows users to access their GraphQL data exactly the way they want.

Apollo Optics is now free for up to 1 million GraphQL requests per month, a significant increase from its previous limit of 10,000 requests. This change aims to make Optics more accessible to developers and teams of all sizes, with the goal of removing obstacles to industry-wide GraphQL adoption. The new pricing move follows the launch of Apollo Engine, which offers similar features to Optics but with additional capabilities such as error tracking, query caching, and support for up to 1 million requests per month. As part of this effort, Apollo is also introducing Optics Pro, an add-on feature that provides extended data retention, architectural review sessions, priority support, and direct access to GraphQL experts. The Optics Pro add-on starts at $499/month and is available now, with more features planned for later in the year.

Apollo Server 1.0 is a community-maintained, open-source GraphQL server that works with all Node.js HTTP server frameworks, including Express, Connect, Hapi, Koa, AWS Lambda, Restify and Micro. It's built on top of the graphql-js reference implementation and follows principles such as simplicity, performance, and community-driven development. The project has grown rapidly, from zero to over 600 commits by 45 contributors in under a year, with production users including notable companies like Credit Karma, Ticketmaster, OpenTable, Mozilla’s Coral project, express.com, Meteor & Apollo. A tutorial on how to set up a GraphQL server is available, and the team is looking for more contributors and maintainers to help drive the project forward.

The Apollo Client Developer Tools Chrome extension has been updated with new features to help developers debug their Apollo-Client-based GraphQL apps. The latest addition includes a built-in GraphiQL query IDE, watched queries inspector, mutation log, and store inspector. These tools provide an easy way for developers to test and inspect different queries, mutations, and data stored in the Apollo Client instance, making it easier to understand and debug their frontend applications.

The tutorial covers the implementation of GraphQL subscriptions on the client-side using Apollo Client, allowing instances of the client to see live updates to messages in a channel. The process involves setting up a WebSocket connection between the client and server, constructing a subscription client, and merging it with the existing network interface. The client then uses subscriptions to detect the creation of new messages and update its React views accordingly. To prevent duplicate messages, the application checks for the existence of the message in the store before adding it. With this implementation, multiple users can see each other's changes in real-time.

Launchpad, a platform for prototyping and demoing GraphQL servers, has been released as open source on GitHub. The project was previously maintained by the Apollo team as an application, but is now being developed and improved with community help. The team has received feedback from users and identified areas where they need assistance, including adding new pads and features, improving tests, and addressing maintenance issues. With Launchpad's release to open source, the Apollo team invites contributors to join them in advancing this tool for GraphQL developers.