Chapter 1, An Introduction to GraphQL and Relay, introduces you to Relay and GraphQL with the assumption that you have never heard of either. We will also discuss the problems that GraphQL and Relay aim to solve. Lastly, you will learn how to configure your Node.js application for GraphQL by setting up a Node.js GraphQL endpoint with a basic Hello World example.

Chapter 2, The Query Language, teaches you the syntax of the GraphQL language and the different features that are available there.

Chapter 3, The GraphQL Schema, gives you hands-on experience for working a GraphQL schema and the core features of a GraphQL runtime.

Chapter 4, Configuring React Applications to Use Relay, walks you through the steps needed to get your React application ready for use with Relay.

Chapter 5, Making GraphQL Queries Relay-Compliant, explains why just having a GraphQL server is not enough. The server will need to be Relay-compliant. This chapter will walk you through the necessary steps to make it so.

Chapter 6, Relay Variables and Object Identification, is about how a user can query the GraphQL endpoint with Relay at the React application’s entry point, reducing round trips to the GraphQL server.

Chapter 7, Relay Mutations, will teach you how to invoke changes by invoking mutations with Relay on the GraphQL endpoints.

Chapter 8, Deploying to the Cloud, walks you through deploying your GraphQL/Relay app on EC2 and Heroku.

The following are the requirements:

This book does not assume that you have any prior experience or familiarity with GraphQL or Relay. You should, however, be comfortable writing Node.js applications on a MongoDB database with REST APIs as well as applications on the client side using React and ES2015.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."

A block of code is set as follows:

const queryType = new GraphQLObjectType({
  name: 'RootQuery',
  fields: {
    hello: {
      type: GraphQLString,
      resolve: () => 'world'
    }
  }
});

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

import socket
socket.setdefaulttimeout(3)
newSocket = socket.socket()
newSocket.connect(("localhost",22))

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

~ $ curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.31.4/install.sh | bash

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Click on the OS X link."

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