With the passage of time, the way APIs are developed has been evolving rapidly. Many companies have been using GraphQL to build APIs. Let’s talk about GraphQL and API’s future in this article.
API & GraphQL
The Application Programming Interface (API) is like a middle man, connecting two sides; a waiter takes your order and brings you food. It is a channel that applications utilize to talk with each other. You put some information at one end, the API takes that information and gets back with a result.
Many different types of APIs exist. You can use them to build web, desktop, mobile applications, CLI tools, extensions, and much more.
Here are different types of APIs that are available to use:
- REST API
- GraphQL API
- Web API
- Browser API
GraphQL is an open-source query language used to deliver data to mobile and web applications. It's similar to REST in that it is used to fetch data for the application, but the methodology for how the data is retrieved is entirely different.
While REST APIs are great and most used, GraphQL introduces a new API technique that can be deployed to improve efficiency and flexibility. There are many things that make GraphQL unique.
GraphQL & APIs Future
We have seen the design of APIs change from SOAP to REST and now GraphQL has replaced REST too. REST APIs started to show problems when more complex APIs started to develop. A few of those problems include no control over what data the server will return. Further, versioning issues lead to code duplication while using a RESTful API. To counter these problems, GraphQL APIs came to the rescue.
GraphQL was created as a solution to the problem faced by Facebook in 2012 while developing their mobile application. Its advent removed issues of poor performance, over or under fetching of data, difficulty of understanding APIs, etc.
Developers from Facebook developed GraphQL as a replacement for REST with a lot many improvements.
GraphQL Powers
With GraphQL, you only get one endpoint, and with that, you can get as much data as you want in a single request. This saves one from building many endpoints. This way the entire development cycle is improved.
As with RESTful API there was a major issue of over and under fetching of data. With GraphQL you fetch only the data you require. This way better performance of your API is ensured.
GraphQL has made developing APIs a lot easier. It is language-agnostic which means you can use it with any language.
GraphQL Is The Future
GraphQL has been growing rapidly as more and more developers are starting to build APIs with it. As it is a query language it means that the community can always contribute to it and make improvements.
It has essential features that are required to create modern APIs for modern applications. GraphQL is now being considered to be the future of APIs as it is encouraging its developers to build more documentation, tools, and support for the language. This will ensure a stable, neutral, and sustainable future for GraphQL.