April 2024 Summaries

The article explains how Apollo Router supports federated subscriptions using the HTTP callback protocol. This allows subgraphs to communicate updates to the router without maintaining long-lived, resource-intensive connections common with WebSocket approaches. The process involves three primary roles: the router, the subgraph, and the emitter. The router receives a subscription operation, sends it to the responsible subgraph, and attaches instructions for how the subgraph can "call back." The subgraph then acts as both the subgraph and the emitter, sending regular "check" messages to the router at predefined intervals, providing updates via a "next" message when something changes, and closing a subscription connection with the router. This enables subscriptions across multiple subgraphs without the weight of multiple long-term WebSocket connections, allowing clients to receive data from multiple sources in a single operation.

Apollo Client 3.10 has been released, introducing new experimental schema-based testing utilities under the `@apollo/client/testing/experimental` import. The new tools, `createTestSchema` and `createSchemaFetch`, allow for more flexible and realistic testing of GraphQL schemas. Additionally, a new API called `client.watchFragment` enables the functionality of the `useFragment` hook to be used in Vanilla JavaScript or other frameworks. Furthermore, the `createQueryPreloader` API has reached "stable" status after being introduced as "alpha" in Apollo Client 3.9 and hearing positive feedback from users. The new features are designed to provide a more comprehensive testing experience for developers using Apollo Client.

Realtor.com's adoption of GraphQL, a unified API solution, enabled the company to simplify its tech stack and scale without compromising performance. The company faced challenges in addressing technological components alone, highlighting the importance of storytelling and communication to connect with other teams. Realtor.com targeted four areas: data platform, identity, CI/CD pipeline, and API layer, ultimately choosing GraphQL and Apollo Federation for its unifying API solution. To overcome resistance from engineering, product, design, leadership, and cross-functional teams, Suzy Julius and Cabe Waldrop employed a strategic approach, including creating a Strategic Technical Initiative Group to collaborate with multiple individuals and teams. The company then built a supergraph to achieve a federated GraphQL architecture, allowing individual service teams to maintain and release changes on their own GraphQL APIs while providing a unified API for client developers. This paradigm shift enabled Realtor.com to express the intent of its product and power high-quality user experiences across various platforms.

Apollo Federation 2.7 introduces progressive @override, a feature that allows developers to migrate any part of their graph to a new service and customize how traffic is gradually rolled over to the new service. This feature enables the rollout of changes such as field migration with a gradual percentage of traffic, allowing for easier rollback in case everything breaks. Progressive @override can be used to break down monolithic architectures or to migrate fields between subgraphs, making it an ideal tool for platform engineering efforts and self-service migrations for APIs to production. The feature is available on the Apollo Router Enterprise plan and offers a powerful new tool for better flexibility and control in service migration.

API Days NY will take place on April 30th and May 1st, 2024, in New York City. The event aims to bring together API leaders and experts to learn about federated GraphQL and its applications in enterprise platforms. Keynote speakers include Matt DeBergalis, Founder and CTO of Apollo GraphQL, who will discuss the future of GraphQL federation and its potential for combining APIs to build AI-era products. Other notable sessions and workshops cover topics such as optimizing API performance, creating effective schema designs, and building internal communities for API governance. The event also features a meetup and happy hour with peer leaders and experts, where attendees can network and learn from each other. Register now to secure a free pass before they run out!

Wayfair, a leading home goods brand, achieved success with its federated GraphQL architecture by breaking down its monolithic PHP application into domain-oriented microservices and implementing a unified schema using Apollo Federation. The company developed a product mindset to build community, establish governance, and learn how to approach technical challenges when supporting suppliers, partners, customers, and internal developers. Key principles for GraphQL adoption include being patient, knowing your users, meeting in the middle with senior leaders, and setting clear expectations. Wayfair's success was driven by its ability to educate its users, invest in stakeholder relationships, and set clear expectations, ultimately leading to a graph that sees 220 million requests a day from 80 different subgraphs and a community of approximately 500 users.

The GraphQL Summit 2024 is a conference focused on GraphQL federation, an architecture that's becoming increasingly important for managing API complexity in distributed architectures. With Gartner predicting that 30% of enterprises will incorporate GraphQL federation into their stacks within three years, the event aims to provide insights and practical advice on how to leverage this architecture to deliver personalized, AI-driven applications. The conference features talks, workshops, and networking opportunities with confirmed speakers from leading companies like Netflix, Coinbase, and Indeed, covering topics such as architecture, platform management, human factors, and client development. Attendees will learn about the latest trends and best practices in GraphQL federation, as well as how to modernize their API strategy to reduce technical debt, improve developer velocity, drive a better user experience, and adapt to the ever-changing digital landscape.

The Apollo Federation, a standard for enterprise API platforms, has emerged as the industry consensus for composing APIs at scale. Organizations such as Netflix, Expedia, and Wayfair have adopted GraphQL federation to abstract API complexity, and its adoption is expected to rise with Gartner predicting that 30% of enterprises using GraphQL will use federation by 2027. Federation enables a platform strategy, providing centralized governance, team autonomy, composability, and adaptability to evolving requirements. Companies like Zillow, Square, Priceline.com, and Booking.com rely on Apollo Federation to power their API platforms, choosing it for its unified experience, modularity, and iterative approach. The technology has evolved over the years, with milestones including the publication of initial Federation code in 2019, more expressive graphs in 2020, Apollo Federation 2.0 in 2021, and Federated subscriptions in 2023. Apollo is working on a proposal for a common specification within the GraphQL Working Group to establish a standard for this technology category, which will unlock innovation and benefit the community.

The Apollo GraphQL team has announced the 7th annual GraphQL Summit, set to take place in New York City on October 8-10, 2024. The event will gather industry leaders and API platform teams to share insights into successful GraphQL deployments at scale, with a focus on GraphQL federation, which is expected to see significant adoption by 30% of enterprises using GraphQL by 2027. Featured speakers include industry luminaries from companies such as Netflix, Coinbase, and Indeed, who will share their expertise on the future of GraphQL and its applications in various sectors, including retail, automotive, and banking. The event aims to support the growing adoption of GraphQL federation, which is transforming the way enterprises build and deploy APIs, with a focus on leveraging this technology for artificial intelligence and other emerging use cases.

Apollo's official learning platform, Odyssey, offers hands-on GraphQL tutorials and trainings for developers to boost their skills. The platform has helped close to 40,000 learners over the past year, with courses now available in three new languages: Java, .NET (C#), and TypeScript, in addition to JavaScript. Learners can build a music catalog API, learn about federation, and assess their understanding through practice sections. With various channels for reaching out for help, including in-lesson comments, Discord, and the community forum, learners can share feedback and iterate on course development. The courses are currently in beta and will continue to evolve based on user experiences.