August 2023 Summaries

Modernizing your MERN Stack with GraphQL and GraphOS: A Step-by-Step Guide` The article discusses the benefits of using GraphQL in a MERN stack application or microservice, including simplifying routes and improving developer experience. It provides a step-by-step guide on how to upgrade a project to speak GraphQL using Apollo Server and Apollo Client. The guide covers installing necessary packages, defining a schema, writing resolvers, exposing a GraphQL route, and upgrading the client project. By following this guide, developers can improve their project's performance, scalability, and maintainability, while also reducing code duplication and improving developer onboarding. Additionally, the article mentions the benefits of using GraphOS for schema checks or routing requests across multiple GraphQL services.

Enforce schema consistency across federated graphs with GraphOS by adding composition rules to the Apollo GraphOS linter, which can be configured to flag inconsistent elements, overridden or unused elements, and issues with Federation directives. Composition rules are enforced by the GraphOS linter checks workflow, which can be integrated into CI/CD pipelines and the GraphOS registry for centralized enforcement. To get started, users can access the Checks Configuration page in GraphOS Studio or follow a step-by-step setup guide. With composition rules enabled, API platform teams can ensure that their schema stays consistent across multiple subgraphs.

The End-of-Life for Apollo Server 3 has been extended from October 22, 2023, to October 22, 2024. This decision was made in response to community feedback regarding the migration process, and it will allow more time for those adopting Apollo Server 4. Although security patches and fixes for major regressions will continue until October 2024, after which maintenance will cease. The official Apollo GraphQL Discord is encouraged to keep the conversation going and share input with the community.

GraphQL is designed to offer a more flexible, self-serve developer experience, but its open-ended approach often raises questions about its security model. To deliver performance and security at all times, API platform teams should have the means to eliminate exposure to the potential performance impacts of excessively complex queries. Apollo is introducing a new approach for preventing unbounded access to GraphQL APIs: GraphOS persisted query safelisting. This allows API teams to prevent service degradation from complex queries by centrally safelisting known operations in Apollo Router. GraphOS offers varying levels of safelist restrictions that enable incremental adoption and flexibility in development environments without sacrificing security in production. Persisted query safelisting is available in preview today for Apollo customers on the GraphOS Enterprise plan, and teams can configure safelisting to maximize security and performance. Safelisting known operations in your router contributes yet another layer to your defense-in-depth strategy for your API platform, and combining it with additional checks such as governing operation shape and limiting scope of access can further enhance security.

The Strangler Fig pattern is a recommended approach for migrating away from a monolith, allowing organizations to make incremental progress towards the goal while minimizing disruption to their clients. By placing a facade in front of the monolith and gradually removing or replacing its components, organizations can decouple themselves from the monolith without affecting their consumers. This approach leverages Federation as a critical enabler, providing a productive change framework that allows for rapid progress with minimal waste of time and money. The key technical aspect is to bring about productive change quickly while managing risk, using an API Gateway to fetch data responses and a Supergraph contract to decouple the system. By following this pattern and compartmentalizing away unnecessary complexity, organizations can successfully migrate away from their monoliths, leveraging Federation to deliver digital transformations on time and on budget.

Apollo Client 3.8 introduces several significant features and improvements, including support for React Suspense integration, programmatically modifying query documents using custom document transforms, automatically removing `__typename` fields from variables, a new error extraction mechanism that reduces bundle size in production builds, type-safe way to skip queries with the `skipToken`, a new directive `@nonreactive` to selectively skip re-rendering for data changed in specific field or fragment subtrees, and improved ESM compatibility. The release also introduces a Spotify Showcase fully integrated with Apollo Client. Future plans include introducing lazy versions of `useBackgroundQuery` and suspenseful version of `useFragment`, as well as more robust testing utilities and fine-grained metrics throughout the core library.