Hacker News Reader

The one thing I never got with GraphQL is what do you query if you don't know what to query for??? Can someone answer this for me.

I don't know what I need. Server tells me I need {allthedogs}. Now I know to query for {allthedogs}... what's the point of GraphQL?

View on HN

The schema should still be documented somewhere, like any API. But even if it's not: GraphQL supports a special "introspection query" that will tell you the entire schema that you can query. Pointing a tool like GraphiQL (https://github.com/graphql/graphiql) at a GraphQL endpoint will even run the introspection query automatically and turn the result into rendered explorable documentation. That's how you figure out what to query.

Usually GraphQL APIs are served alongside a GraphiQL client, which lets you run queries, and read the schema and docs for that API. See, for example, the Star Wars API example: http://graphql.org/swapi-graphql/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com