February 2020 Summaries

The Apollo community is comprised of developers worldwide building client-side experiences on top of the data graph. To contribute to this community, individuals can write about their experience with the data graph, which can be published on the official Apollo blog. The process begins by submitting a blog post proposal form and working with the team to refine the content. The community values various types of blog posts, including "how-to" guides, stories of overcoming challenges, showcases of tools or fixes contributed to Apollo's open-source community, guidance and resources for learning Apollo, and other topics related to the data graph. Topics such as TypeScript, GraphQL best practices, caching, and front-end development are particularly welcome. The team is open to all kinds of topics that relate to Apollo and values posts at all reading levels.

Apollo Client with React Hooks allows developers to manually trigger client-side GraphQL queries using the `useLazyQuery` hook, enabling fetching data in response to events such as button clicks. This approach is useful when data needs to be fetched only when a specific condition is met or an event occurs, rather than on initial page load. By utilizing `useLazyQuery`, developers can control when and how their GraphQL queries are executed, providing more flexibility and customization options for their applications.

☝️ GraphQL File Uploads with Apollo Server 2, React Hooks, TypeScript & Amazon S3 [Tutorial]` This tutorial shows how to implement file uploads via "multipart requests" in the obsolete Apollo Server 2. It provides a step-by-step guide on setting up an Apollo Server with TypeScript for file uploads, configuring the uploader to pipe uploaded files to AWS S3, and implementing the upload logic using classes and interfaces. The tutorial also covers setting up a client-side component to upload files using the Apollo Client and its `apollo-upload-client` package. It emphasizes the importance of security best practices when handling file uploads in GraphQL applications.

When building an app with a GraphQL server, there are several approaches to implementing file uploads. The most recommended approach is using signed URLs, which scales well and provides finer control compared to dedicated image services. However, this approach requires more work to set up and may not be suitable for all use cases. Another option is to use a dedicated image service, which can provide optimized image uploads but comes with an additional cost. The third approach, multipart upload requests, is not recommended due to security issues and performance impacts. For hobbyist projects, using a dedicated image service is the best approach, while for enterprise applications, signed URLs are preferred. Legacy apps that already use multipart requests should also avoid this approach and instead opt for signed URLs or another secure method.