April 2019 Summaries

Delicious Simplicity (DS), a boutique design & development company in Los Angeles, successfully built a blazing fast static site using Hasura, Gatsby, and JAMstack. The project involved creating a web app with real-time functionality similar to popular video platforms like Youtube. DS used GraphQL for their APIs to ensure the same backend could be utilized for both the static web app and the mobile app being developed separately by another team. They discovered Hasura at JAMstack Conf, which allowed them to quickly set up a complete static site with authentication and real-time functionality. The Hasura backend was flexible enough to serve most of the needs of the mobile app as well. DS plans to add more features to the app and use Hasura for future projects, including a real-time chat app.

Next month, a special edition of GraphQL Contributor Days will be held in partnership with This Dot. The event is enterprise-focused and open to all who are implementing GraphQL at their companies. It marks the first fully online version of the event, featuring discussions on challenges and nuances of using GraphQL technology, collaboration with other language libraries, and updates from the new GraphQL Foundation. Notable guests include Lee Byron, co-creator of GraphQL, and various contributors to different language libraries for GraphQL. The event will take place online on May 15, 2019, at 11am - 3pm PST.

This tutorial guides you through building a real-time mobile chat app using 3factor architecture, which leverages real-time communication, eventing, and serverless computing for efficient full-stack app development. The guide covers setting up Hasura GraphQL engine, creating necessary tables and views in Postgres, deploying cloud functions with Google Cloud Functions, and implementing the frontend using React Native and Expo. It also discusses handling user registration, adding users to rooms, sending messages, subscribing to chat rooms, and managing push notifications. The 3factor architecture simplifies app development by improving developer experience on the front-end and abstracting away the development operations.

This tutorial demonstrates how to get started with Hasura and Flutter by porting a voting app. It covers setting up a new Flutter project, adding the necessary GraphQL library, preparing GraphQL documents, hooking up the client, and adding query and mutation features. The main goal is to showcase integrating Hasura into Flutter apps. Prerequisites include knowledge of Hasura and basic familiarity with Flutter.

Credimi, a fintech startup that provides cash advances against invoices, has implemented Hasura as a high-performance read layer over their existing MySQL database. The company chose to shift the read layer to GraphQL due to its ability to reduce time to market and feature velocity post-launch. They also found that using GraphQL allowed for more efficient data retrieval compared to REST APIs. Hasura was selected as the GraphQL vendor of choice, with Credimi's engineering team praising its developer experience and responsive community support.

Cynthesize is a platform that aims to facilitate the process of turning ideas into products by leveraging community-driven ideation and development. It consists of two stages: refining an idea through community discussions, and working towards a finished product with mentorship and checkpoints. The founder chose Postgres for its efficiency and GraphQL for its ability to query data without additional code requirements. Hasura was selected due to its ease of use with GraphQL and Postgres, as well as seamless integration with OAuth services and helpful documentation. Cynthesize is currently working on launching the project for mentors and plans to utilize Hasura's resources to build more features.

ProPublica Illinois, an independent nonprofit newsroom, built The Ticket Trap using the JAMstack with Hasura. This interactive database allows users to search through parking ticket records issued in Chicago since 1996. Developed by David Eads, a news applications developer at ProPublica Illinois, The Ticket Trap was created to provide deeper insight into their stories. By using PostgreSQL and querying with GraphQL, the development process was significantly simplified, allowing for more time spent on other aspects of development like design and frontend performance. The JAMstack architecture also reduced maintenance efforts once the app had been deployed. Released just before Christmas 2018, The Ticket Trap turned out to be one of the top 5 projects in terms of traffic for ProPublica Illinois that year.

This tutorial explores the use of Hasura as a data access layer in serverless architecture. The author discusses their experience using GraphQL and AWS Lambda for a niche CRM tool with inconsistent traffic patterns, highlighting challenges faced such as complex SQL queries, N+1 query problem, lack of database connection pooling, issues with VPCs, and cold start issue. They then describe how Hasura resolved these issues by acting as a data access layer in front of their Postgres database within the VPC, offering benefits like DB connection pooling, access to Postgres from lambda without deploying inside VPC, simpler SQL query building for GraphQL resolvers, and solution to N+1 query issue. The author also mentions current challenges faced with graphql query injection and public port in VPC but overall concludes that Hasura has been reliable and stable for their needs.

Lineup Ninja, an abstract and agenda management platform for conferences, exhibitions, and association events, migrated from Firebase Realtime Database to a new backend powered by Hasura. The company faced issues with their MVP backend, including security and regulatory compliance standards, as well as the need for powerful search and querying features. They decided to use GraphQL due to its similarity to Firebase's query structure and chose Hasura because of its ease of use, real-time capabilities, and compatibility with Postgres databases. The migration allowed Lineup Ninja to cater to various enterprise customer segments, improve security, and save on infrastructure costs.

A Fortune 500 Healthcare Company adopted GraphQL using Hasura and observed significant improvements in feature velocity and dev productivity. The technology team chose Hasura due to its extensive support for Postgres, easy setup with minimal boilerplate, high performance, and reduced need for backend code maintenance. As a result, app development time decreased from months and years to weeks, team size reduced from 15 to 7-8 developers, and skill set requirements changed to focus on full-stack React developers. The company plans to implement Hasura across all business lines in the future.

This article discusses the various authentication methods available in Hasura. It covers four main methods: admin secret based authentication, JSON web tokens (JWT) based authentication, webhook based authentication, and unauthenticated access. The article also explains how session variables are used to tie together authentication and authorization in Hasura. Additionally, it provides resources for integrating JWT-based authentication with popular providers such as Auth0, AuthGuardian, AWS Cognito, Firebase, and NextJS apps. Lastly, the article briefly touches upon single sign-on for Hasura Console.

This tutorial guides developers on how to add authentication and authorization to Next.js 8 serverless apps using JWT (JSON Web Tokens) and GraphQL. It covers deploying a Node.js Express JWT service for authenticating requests to Hasura GraphQL Engine, setting up authorization using JWT and Hasura GraphQL permissions, creating a sample Next.js app with login, signup, and articles listing page, and finally deploying the app on Now.sh using serverless target. The tech stack used includes Next.js 8 for building the serverless React app, Apollo Client for GraphQL querying, Node.js server for JWT authentication, and Hasura GraphQL Engine for GraphQL APIs with permissions.

This article provides a detailed guide on how to add authentication and authorization to Vue.js applications using Auth0 and GraphQL. The tech stack used includes Vue.js with vue-cli-plugin-apollo and vue-router, Auth0 for authentication, and Hasura GraphQL Engine for instant GraphQL APIs. The process involves deploying Hasura along with Postgres to get the GraphQL APIs ready. Then, an application is created in Auth0, custom JWT claims are added, and a JWT signing certificate is obtained. The backend setup is completed by enabling JWT mode on Hasura and creating an Auth0 rule for user syncing into the postgres database. The Vue.js frontend is configured to make GraphQL queries with the right headers using vue-apollo. Apollo Client is set up with the getAuth method, which ensures that ApolloClient uses the token returned by Auth0 for Authorization header when making its query or subscription. Authentication and authorization are ensured through a combination of authentication tokens from local storage, event emitting after successful login, and permissions defined in Hasura console. Protected routes using Vue Router are also implemented with navigation guards. Finally, the sample app is run by installing dependencies, running npm serve, and checking out the boilerplate on GitHub for further customization or questions.