October 2019 Summaries

The text discusses ways to add custom business logic using Hasura, a platform that provides instant real-time GraphQL on Postgres with an authorization engine. It covers three methods for extending Hasura: data-driven logic, bringing your own GraphQL service, and event-driven business logic. Data-driven logic involves using Postgres views and functions to add new types and fields to the GraphQL API. The second method allows users to integrate their own GraphQL API into a unified one using "remote schemas." Lastly, event-driven business logic can be achieved through Hasura Actions, which create custom GraphQL mutation specifications that map to event handlers like microservices APIs or serverless functions.

Hasura is a GraphQL engine that simplifies the integration of GraphQL into microservices architecture. It connects databases, upstream microservices, external APIs, and event-driven business logic to create a unified GraphQL API for consumers. Hasura allows developers to dynamically map data models and API resources into an interconnected graph. The platform also enables the creation of custom mutations that are converted into events and delivered to microservices or serverless functions in an event-driven manner, facilitating seamless integration with event-driven business logic. Hasura ensures decoupled workflows for microservice teams, allowing them to remain independent without coordinating with each other. It addresses challenges related to dynamically building a stable GraphQL API and performance optimization. The platform also supports the upcoming Actions feature for event-driven business logic, promoting fault tolerance and scalability. Security is another key aspect of Hasura, offering an authorization engine with role, attribute, and rule-based access control, as well as schema masking for different end-user roles. Hasura encourages community engagement through platforms like Discord, GitHub, and direct scheduling calls to discuss roadmap updates and address challenges faced by users in GraphQL and microservices deployment.

Planet-scale, geo-replicated workloads with Hasura can be achieved through combinations such as YugaByte + Hasura for a massively scalable database and real-time GraphQL, Timescale + Hasura for time-series workloads with custom aggregation functions, and serverless applications using AWS Aurora Postgres and Hasura for secure realtime IoT dashboards and business logic in serverless functions.

Hasura is an open-source GraphQL API platform that can be used by content writers and developers to build secure, content-heavy applications for multiple platforms. It acts as a headless CMS, allowing the backend system to be decoupled from the frontend, enabling developers to create rich experiences with any framework or platform of their choice. Hasura provides a basic built-in CMS called Hasura Console, which lets users manage data in Postgres. Developers can also choose to build custom content types over Hasura GraphQL APIs as a foundation for their custom CMS. React Admin and TinaCMS are two frontend tooling options available that enable easy customization. Additionally, Hasura supports remote joins, allowing developers to integrate external CMS-specific solutions like Contentful or Wordpress. It also provides robust security features such as authentication, access control, and allow lists.

JAMStack is an architecture for web apps that decouples frontend and backend development teams. It imposes constraints on how to build UI, such as pre-built markup/UI and no server side code dealing with UI. This approach is great for static sites or static site generators but raises the question of how to handle dynamic content. Content types can be classified based on whether they are user specific, frequency of updates, and interactivity. Different approaches can be applied to handle dynamic content in JAMStack sites, such as sourcing dynamic content at build time, hydrating static pages on the client, or separating static and dynamic pages. These methods come with caveats but offer benefits for performance and flexibility when building powerful apps.

This article discusses how to build a dynamic app using JAMStack (JavaScript, APIs, and Markup) with Gatsby and Hasura GraphQL. The benefits of JAMStack include faster performance, scalability via CDN, clean separation of concerns, and easy deployment with automated builds and git integration. By incorporating Hasura's GraphQL APIs, the site becomes more dynamic and powerful. The article provides a step-by-step guide on how to create a new Gatsby site, build a simple static site to list articles, and add dynamic data using Hasura's GraphQL APIs. It also covers how to separate static and dynamic data, set up authentication, configure permissions for users with Hasura role-based access control, and deploy the app on Netlify or other JAMStack compliant providers. Other popular static site generators around React and Vue are mentioned, including react-static, Nuxt.js, Gridsome, Jekyll, Hugo, Hexo, and VuePress.

The upcoming GraphQL Contributor Days event is set to take place in San Francisco on November 1st, 2019. This quarterly event, hosted by the GraphQL community and partnered with This Dot, aims to bring together those working closely with GraphQL for discussions on key topics within the ecosystem. The theme for this edition is "GraphQL with Microservices," with topics such as architecture, team structure, challenges, solutions, return on investment, and tooling opportunities being explored. Notable guests include Tracy Lee, Rajoshi Ghosh, Tanmai Gopal, Ivan Goncharov, Dan Schafer, Sasha Solomon, Eve Porcello, Alex Banks, Tim Griesser, Shruti Kapoor, Jim Gust, Dan Boerner, Patrick Arminio, Zhifan Li, and Christian Nwamba. Interested attendees can sign up for an invitation on the event page.