Book Image

Hands-on Full-Stack Web Development with GraphQL and React

By : Sebastian Grebe
Book Image

Hands-on Full-Stack Web Development with GraphQL and React

By: Sebastian Grebe

Overview of this book

React, one of the most widely used JavaScript frameworks, allows developers to build fast and scalable front end applications for any use case. GraphQL is the modern way of querying an API. It represents an alternative to REST and is the next evolution in web development. Combining these two revolutionary technologies will give you a future-proof and scalable stack you can start building your business around. This book will guide you in implementing applications by using React, Apollo, Node.js and SQL. We'll focus on solving complex problems with GraphQL, such as abstracting multi-table database architectures and handling image uploads. Our client, and server will be powered by Apollo. Finally we will go ahead and build a complete Graphbook. While building the app, we'll cover the tricky parts of connecting React to the back end, and maintaining and synchronizing state. We'll learn all about querying data and authenticating users. We'll write test cases to verify the front end and back end functionality for our application and cover deployment. By the end of the book, you will be proficient in using GraphQL and React for your full-stack development requirements.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

Setting up Apollo Engine

Apollo Engine provides many great features, which we'll explore in this chapter. Before moving on, however, you need to sign up for an Apollo Engine account. Apollo Engine is a commercial product produced by MDG, the Meteor Development Group, the company behind Apollo.

At the time of writing, they offer three different plans, which you can find by going to https://www.apollographql.com/plans/. When signing up, you get a two-week trial of the Team plan, which is one of the paid plans. Afterward, you'll be downgraded to the free plan. You should compare all three plans to understand how they differ—they're all worth checking out.

To sign up, visit https://engine.apollographql.com/login. Currently, you can only sign up using a GitHub account. If you don't have one already, create a GitHub account at https://https://github.com/join...