September 2022 Summaries

Heroku is deprecating free resource plans, including Heroku Dynos and Heroku Postgres, starting November 28th. As a Hasura Cloud user, you will need to upgrade your Heroku account or migrate your Heroku Postgres database to another vendor before the deadline. This post provides step-by-step instructions on how to take a backup of your Heroku Postgres DB and Hasura Metadata/Migrations for migration purposes. The process involves using pg_dump to export the database, importing the SQL into a new vendor's instance, creating migration files and metadata with the Hasura CLI, connecting the new database as a data source in Hasura, applying migrations and metadata, and verifying the new connection and API by trying out a GraphQL query.

The general availability of BigQuery in Hasura has been announced. This feature allows users to connect a BigQuery database to their Hasura application for data consumption. To do this, a "service account key" file containing the necessary credentials is required. Once connected, nested object queries can be performed by setting up relationships between tables. Additionally, data validation can be achieved using Hasura permissions. The documentation provides more information on these features and how to use them effectively.

The text discusses the fifth edition of Hasura's participation in Hacktoberfest, an annual event organized by Digital Ocean to encourage contributions to open-source projects. This year, participants are invited to contribute to the Hasura GraphQL Engine, a tool that makes data instantly accessible over real-time GraphQL API. The text provides guidelines on how to get involved and submit valid Pull Requests (PRs) for consideration in Hacktoberfest. It also mentions the deadline for submitting PRs, which is October 31st, and the review process that will continue until November 11th. Additionally, it highlights the importance of adhering to the contributing guide and code of conduct while participating in the event. The text concludes by encouraging participants to join Hasura's community on Twitter and Discord for updates and discussions related to Hacktoberfest.

The Hasura team has automated their PR review infrastructure using GitHub Actions and Jira. By automating the process of creating tickets in Jira for new PRs, they have offloaded repetitive tasks from their engineers, allowing them to focus on more engaging work. This automation also helps deliver quicker reviews and maintain a regular release cadence. The team plans to further improve this system by assigning specific engineers to review each PR based on who is "on call" at the time.

Hasura's GraphQL Engine is a trusted tool for developers worldwide. It provides an extremely lightweight and high-performance product that gives instant realtime GraphQL APIs on Postgres databases. Hydra, the open source data warehouse built from the ground up on Postgres, can now execute analytic reads 30 times faster and with four times better data compression than standard row-based tables when used in conjunction with Hasura. Together, they support instant GraphQL & REST APIs, declarative role-based authorization, advanced security, and performance with rate limiting, allow lists, and caching. Hydra is an open source data warehouse that brings the source of truth advantages to every organization by offering a Postgres compatible data warehouse.

Hasura has introduced User Groups (HUGs) to foster local communities of Hasura users around the world. HUGs aim to provide a platform for individuals interested in learning more about Hasura and its applications, as well as opportunities to connect with other users and members of the Hasura team. Local meetups can take various forms such as talks, group learning sessions, workshops, and watch parties. The Hasura team encourages community members to organize HUGs in their respective cities, offering support through a comprehensive organizer's guide.

This article demonstrates how to use event triggers with an MS SQL Server database using Hasura. It begins by setting up a SQL Server database and connecting it to Hasura. After creating a user table, the author explains how to set up an event trigger that sends a welcome email to new users when they are added to the database. The process involves configuring a webhook and modifying request method and URL template. Finally, the article provides instructions for testing the event trigger by inserting a new user into the database and checking the email inbox and invocation logs.

The "Naming Convention" feature in GraphQL schema allows users to customize the names of fields, types, and arguments. This is particularly useful when dealing with multiple databases within a Hasura application. There are two available naming conventions - hasura-default and graphql-default. By default, all Hasura applications use the hasura-default naming convention, which uses snake casing for names and does not change enum values. The graphql-default naming convention uses PascalCase for type names, camelCase for field names and arguments, and UPPERCASE for enum values. Users can also customize root fields and type names by adding prefixes or suffixes.

This tutorial demonstrates how to integrate Firebase Authentication with a realtime Hasura app. The process involves setting up Hasura and creating the data model using the Hasura Console, setting up authentication, and building the React web app. The integration of Firebase Authentication is chosen due to its security features and ease of use. The tutorial also covers how to set environment variables in the project settings, create a data model with tables for "programming_language" and "loved_language", define permissions for different roles, and deploy a cloud function using Firebase Cloud Functions. Finally, it discusses building the React app components and subscribing to real-time data using Apollo Client. The code for this tutorial is available on GitHub.

In this tutorial, we will be building a React Native to-do app that helps users add tasks, view them, mark/unmark them as complete and delete them. To build the app, we will use React Native, Apollo Client for client-side GraphQL, Hasura GraphQL Engine for GraphQL backend, and Auth0 for authentication. We will be using the new Query and Mutation components that Apollo introduced in their 2.1.3 release of react-apollo. The tutorial covers setting up a GraphQL backend with Hasura Cloud, creating tables and permissions, configuring Apollo Client, setting up React Native project, performing authentication with Auth0, writing our first Query and Mutation components, and more.

The recent addition of streaming over GraphQL subscriptions for Postgres in Hasura GraphQL Engine allows users to instantly create APIs for clients to fetch large amounts or "fast moving" data as a continuous stream. This API can be safely exposed to internal or external HTTP clients and works with any GraphQL client that supports subscriptions over websockets. The streaming API on Postgres addresses challenges such as allowing authorization rules, preventing missing events, and scaling websocket connections to support millions of concurrent HTTP clients.

Hasura has introduced a new feature in its v2.8.0 version that allows users to disable GraphQL query and subscription root fields selectively using Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). This enables users to hide certain root fields or none at all, depending on their requirements. To use this feature, users need to export the metadata file, make the corresponding changes, and then upload the metadata file back to Hasura. The feature also allows users to disable specific GraphQL operations such as queries or subscriptions for a particular role, or even disallow both. Additionally, it enables users to access tables only through their primary key or indirectly through a relationship.