Absinthe and the Tech Stack

PlateSlate application

For the rest of the course, we’ll be focusing on improving a given PlateSlate application. PlateSlate models the menu, ordering, and order fulfillment needs of a quick-service restaurant chain. We’ll incrementally build out the domain model and add features to its API that will expose us to deeper, trickier aspects of GraphQL and Elixir.

We’re also going to leverage a couple of packages to expose our GraphQL API through the web, specifically, Plug and Phoenix.

Finally, we’ll use some packages to obtain underlying data. One of the core value propositions of GraphQL is its ability to provide a common interface to different types of data stores. We’ll try to illustrate this as we build our application. This means we’ll eventually use a basic HTTP client to make HTTP requests to other APIs. We’ll also use Ecto to access an SQL database. Strong proficiency with these packages is not required, but a basic grasp of how to interact with a relational database will help you get the most out of this course.