If you think that setting up a GraphQL server is a difficult task, GraphQL Boilerplates Github repo will prove you that you're very wrong.
The best thing about GraphQL is that is can be used with any technology. Let's take a look at starter projects for most popular web technologies, provided by one of the finest GraphQL devs. Now first off, let's take a look at TypeScript.
TypeScript-graphql-server
TypeScript is a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript, which popularity constantly rising. The TypeScript Boilerplate repo contains two starter kits:
Both allowing to bootstrap your GraphQL server with TypeScript within seconds. No matter if you need a Basic option for a simple personal project or Advanced boilerplate with more features you are getting scalable, production-ready GraphQL server.
All projects are based on graphql-yoga, a GraphQL server library focused on providing the easiest possible setup.
Let's take a look at features available in those versions:
| Basic | Advanced | |
|---|---|---|
| Scalable GraphQL server: The server uses graphql-yoga which is based on Apollo Server & Express | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Static type generation: TypeScript types for GraphQL queries & mutations are generated in a build step | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| GraphQL database: Includes GraphQL database binding to Prisma (running on MySQL) | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Tooling: Out-of-the-box support for GraphQL Playground & query performance tracing | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Extensible: Simple and flexible data model – easy to adjust and extend | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| No configuration overhead: Preconfigured graphql-config setup | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Realtime updates: Support for GraphQL subscriptions | ❌ | ✔️ |
| Authentication: Signup and login workflows are ready to use for your users | ❌ | ✔️ |
The setup is the same for both versions:
graphql create my-app
when prompted pick the desired boilerplate & deploy the Prisma service to a public cluster, then navigate into server directory of your new project and start it:
cd my-app/server
yarn dev
and our project structure will look like this:
Top comments (2)
Another open-source alternative is our recently published github.com/UnlyEd/next-right-now.
It's a boilerplate for quick getting started with a production-grade project featuring the Next.js framework, hosted on Zeit platform. It includes GraphCMS as built-in, and lots of tooling around GraphQL (GraphQL Schema, etc.)
Note that GraphCMS itself isn't open source, but a third party provider, which takes care of the GraphQL server (API), database and CMS.
As an alternative to the method in blog post, you can check graphback.dev. It will generate a vendor-independent GraphQL server with all logic in generated source code.