What you need to know about GraphQL enums

GraphQL is a versatile language designed to simplify data querying for modern frontend applications and is widely adopted by industry leaders such as Github, Netflix, and Shopify. While commonly understood features include directives and resolvers, enum types are often overlooked despite their significant role in creating robust GraphQL APIs. This tutorial highlights the importance of enums in improving API consistency, security, and discoverability by replacing free-form strings with predefined values, which reduces validation logic and potential security vulnerabilities. By migrating schemas to use enums, developers can create more user-friendly and efficient APIs, benefiting from GraphQL's inherent strengths in data validation and semantic operations. Tools like Apollo Server and GraphQL Code Generator further enhance the development experience by resolving enum values to their internal counterparts and generating corresponding TypeScript types. This structured approach allows developers to maintain slim resolvers focused on business logic and ensures that APIs provide a simplified interface over complex systems, leveraging GraphQL’s natural, JSON-like API style.