Gain insights into GraphQL's architecture and methodology. Learn about setting up servers, performing complex queries, and updating data with mutations using Apollo Server and Node.js. Discover practical deployment.

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GraphQL is a query language for web APIs and a runtime for fulfilling queries with existing data. GraphQL gives clients the power to ask for precisely what they need, making it easy to evolve APIs with powerful developer tools.

This course is an introduction to GraphQL using the Node.js JavaScript runtime environment and Apollo Server. You’ll start with an introduction to GraphQL’s architecture and functions before exploring the structure of GraphQL data and learning to perform meaningful, complex queries. You’ll then learn how to update server data using mutations. Next, you’ll explore the GraphQL type system and schemas to set up a GraphQL server using Apollo Server. Once the server is set up, you’ll implement a full GraphQL application using Apollo and Node.js.

By the end of this course, you’ll have a rich understanding of GraphQL’s architecture and methodology and be prepared to deploy GraphQL applications to the web using Apollo and Node.js.

Getting Started with GraphQL using Node.js

In the last lesson, we learned about our first GraphQL query. We used a shorthand syntax that omits both the query keyword and the query name, but in a production environment, it’s important to include these to avoid ambiguity in our code.


# Operation Type
The operation type, query, mutation, or subscription specifies the sort of operation we want to do. Unless we’re using query shorthand syntax, in which case we can’t offer a name or variable definitions for our process, the operation type is necessary.


# Operation Name
Our operation should have a name that’s both meaningful and transparent. By default, the operation name is mandatory only for multi-operation documents. It’s highly recommended for debugging and server-side logging. It’s simpler to identify a query in our codebase by name rather than trying to parse the contents when we notice problems in our network logs or the logs of our GraphQL server.


> **Note:** We can appreciate the importance of naming our operation by considering programming languages where named functions are much easier to work with than anonymous functions.
 

Learn how querying with the operation name is useful for debugging.

Introduction

Getting to Know GraphQL

Queries

Mutations

Schemas and Types

Schema Validation

Schema Execution

Schema Introspection

GraphQL Best Practices

GraphQL Exam

Query Operation with Operation Name

Operation Type