March 2022 Summaries

The Apollo Router is a high-performance Federation runtime written in Rust, now available in open preview. It offers improved performance compared to the latest release of Apollo Gateway, with benchmarks showing it is 10x faster and has higher throughput. The preview release adds support for more advanced configuration and customization options, including simple YAML configuration and native Rust plugins. Apollo Router also provides key integrations with Apollo Studio, such as automated supergraph rollout and operation-usage reporting. It can be deployed as a standalone binary, making it easier to manage and scale. Users can start deploying Apollo Router by following three easy steps: downloading the binary, ensuring their project has a supergraph schema, and running the router. The Apollo Router is designed to make extensibility more approachable, with plugins that can be configured using a `router.yaml` file without requiring Rust code. It also supports lightweight Rhai scripting for programmatic customizations when YAML configuration is insufficient.

You can now save and share your GraphQL operations in Apollo Explorer, using Operation Collections. An Operation Collection is a folder that helps you organize operations based on different use cases, client apps, personas, and more. You can create a collection by selecting any graph/variant combination and clicking the "+" button next to the bookmark icon. You can then save an operation to the newly created collection by navigating to the Explorer with an operation, clicking the save icon, giving it a name, selecting the collection to save in, and hitting Save!. Shared collections are automatically visible to every member of the Studio organization who has access to that graph/variant, and you can share a link or embed them directly into your graph's README. Additionally, you can create a collection for a public graph to help developers onboard quickly, and duplicate collections between graphs, including between sandbox and registered graphs.

The Apollo Federation 2 and Gateway 2.0 are now available in preview, offering improved features for building, managing, and scaling unified graphs. The preview includes no breaking changes from the alpha release, with support for `@link` and `@shareable` syntax, and automatic conversion of Federation 1 subgraphs to Federation 2 during composition. To get started, users must upgrade to Gateway 2.0 or higher, turn on Federation 2 composition, and modify their subgraphs at their own pace. The preview is available for those currently using Federation 1, with resources provided to help navigate the transition.

The recent upgrade to Operation Insights in Apollo Studio has introduced three significant enhancements, making it easier to understand the usage and data flow of operations in a graph. The operation signature is now displayed prominently as a side panel, allowing users to quickly view its shape and fields being requested. Additionally, the federation query plan for an operation can be viewed, providing insight into how Apollo Gateway or Router is working under the hood. Furthermore, the client usage display has been updated to show which clients are using an operation, with the most active clients sorted at the top of the list based on the number of requests reported to Apollo Studio via usage reporting.

The GitHub GraphQL API is a powerful tool that provides access to data on GitHub repositories, users, issues, and more. Apollo Studio Explorer is a useful tool for testing and running queries on the GitHub API. To use Apollo Studio Explorer with the GitHub API, you need a personal access token and authentication. The token is used to authenticate requests to the GraphQL API, allowing you to build and run queries to retrieve data such as repository names, stars, and open issues. Building these queries requires selecting relevant fields from the API, including `viewer`, `repositories`, `stargazerCount`, `issues`, and more. Once built, queries can be run in Apollo Studio Explorer to test their functionality and retrieve data. With this tutorial, users can become familiar with building queries and using Apollo Studio Explorer to take full advantage of the GitHub GraphQL API.

Apollo Sandbox now supports subgraph functionality, allowing developers to work with locally-running graphs and run checks to ensure that changes won't break composition or operations against the federated graph. Users can load a subgraph in Sandbox, explore its schema, and run operations without manual refresh. The tool also allows users to compare their local schema with registered subgraphs in Studio and run checks to prevent breaking changes. These features are available on Team and Enterprise plans only and require a Studio account with access to Checks.