Tomek Poniatowicz for GraphQL Editor

Posted on Feb 25, 2019 • Edited on Sep 25, 2019 • Originally published at blog.graphqleditor.com

GraphQL Resources: top tools, extensions & tutorials for beginners

#graphql #webdev #beginners #showdev

Since the GraphQL was introduced in 2015 by Facebook, it's popularity is continuously growing. If you want to learn the GraphQL here is a list of the best tools, extensions, and tutorials to start with.

Knowlege base

GrapQL Official Documentation is definitely the best place to start your GraphQL adventure.
Official Facebook Draft RFC Specification is a place to go if you are looking for raw knowledge regarding GraphQL project.
GraphQL Weekly is a newsletter with news, articles, and everything related to GraphQL
How to GraphQL is a website which will take you into a journey from GraphQL newbie to releasing your first GraphQL project.
Explore-tech.org is a helpful resource for collecting GraphQL tools, especially libraries.
Learn.hasura.io - The 2-hour GraphQL Tutorial series for frontend developers made by Hasura Team

Tools & Extensions

GraphQL Docs is a simple way of generating static documentation for a GraphQL schema in seconds.
GraphCMS a tool that allows you to define the GraphQL API. Create structures, relationships, powerful permissions and manage your content with ease, generally speaking, build a hosted GraphQL back-end for your web project along with tools to manage its content.
GraphQL Editor makes it easier to understand the GraphQL schema. Create it by combining visual blocks and the editor will transform them into code! Features like loading schema from URL/file or a fake backend data can speed up the prototyping of your app.
Apollo Launchpad allows you to write a GraphQL schema in JavaScript making GraphQL code very accessible.
GraphiQL is a simple IDE tool for testing and documenting GraphQL APIs with a nice graphical interface.
GraphQL Playground a GraphiQL alternative.
Apollo Elements a library for building GraphQL-backed UIs without UI frameworks.
Altair - a GraphiQL alternative

Blogs

Video tutorials

How to build a GraphQL Server

Communities

Let's build this directory together! If you know any useful tools, tutorials, blogs for GraphQL post in comments and I will update list!
If you're looking for best GraphQL tutorials also check this post.

Top comments (22)

Tommy May III • May 26 '19 • Edited

In case anyone is nervous about moving to GraphQL let me tell you I have built many REST APIs for fortune 500 companies and for myself. After using GraphQL these last 6 months I am proud to say I will never build another REST API willingly. I'm often very cautious of people that use the word "never" in this industry so that should tell you how strongly I feel about it.

Benefits of GraphQL for me ordered from most important to least important

Typed API schema so there is no guesswork about what an API will return you. There is no guessing what query parameters need to exists for the API to work.
Expressing related data is extremely easy partly because of the point I made about about typed schemas.
The API only has to return to the client what the client asked for. This has the benefit of preventing the API from doing more work than it needs to and smaller payload sizes since the client will not ask for things it does not need.
Status codes have become kind of irrelevant where every response returns a 200 status code. This may be implementation specific, I'm not sure if it's actually part of the spec, but I use Apollo Server. This is a benefit because the use of status codes from developer to developer and API to API is so inconsistent.
Only one endpoint so there is no guesswork in figuring out what endpoints exist.

Thank you for writing this post. I hope more people start giving GraphQL a chance because of it.

Praveen Durairaju • May 14 '19

This is a good list to start with. Thanks for putting this out :)
We at Hasura recently launched learn.hasura.io - The 2 hour GraphQL Tutorial series for frontend developers. It is open-source. Would be a nice addition to the list above :)

Tomek Poniatowicz GraphQL Editor • May 15 '19

Added:)

Patrick Dronk • Feb 25 '19

This is definitely my goto: howtographql.com/

Tomek Poniatowicz GraphQL Editor • Feb 25 '19

Thanks, already on the list :)

CodeAhoy • Oct 19 '19

Hi Tomek,

I wrote a tutorial from using a practical, hands-on approach to explain concepts (examples use the GitHub GraphQL so people can try it out.) Would appreciate if you add it here: codeahoy.com/2019/10/13/graphql-pr...

Thanks