What is GraphQL?
Learn about how GraphQL works and how to use it to fetch data.
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In 2012, Facebook created GraphQL because they needed a better data-fetching approach that they could use across the entire company's products and services. They needed a new approach to fix a specific set of problems and shortcomings they had encountered with the REST approach. They also wanted something that was not too technical and could be understood by developers, designers, and non-technical folk.
GraphQL was launched and used internally by the Facebook team between 2012 and 2015. In 2015, Facebook open-sourced GraphQL, making it available for the public to benefit from and use. The GraphQL Foundation now maintains it.
People relied on the REST technique for communicating with APIs before the advent of GraphQL—and some rely on it even now. REST or Representational State Transfer, is an architectural style that conforms to a set of constraints when developing web services. It replaced SOAP APIs, making it possible to return multiple data formats (JSON, XML, and YAML) depending on what is needed, unlike having to return only XML ...