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Comment by adamkl | Hacker News Reader

This just sounds like you are missing required layers of your application.

I haven't used Postgraphile, but it sounds like you are just exposing your database directly out through a GraphQL wrapper. You'd be experiencing the same pain if you tried this approach with any API technology (gRPC, REST, SOAP, etc).

You should still have code for authorization and business logic, and your API should probably be exposing a focused subset of your data model unless your clients really need to be able to traverse the entire database.

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Except utilizing loopback i simply define my models, what fields are exposed by models, and their relationships. I can easily implement RBAC restrictions via a simple access hook or ACL's.

To me having to maintain two separate graphql services for a single API seems extremely convoluted. I can't expose the private api to any other internal services, because all the authorization and restrictions are done on the application layer.

To me isn't that just using a GraphQL server as an ORM? To me that seems like an extremely roundabout way to do something like that.

> because all the authorization and restrictions are done on the application layer.

Which application tier? It sounds like you're using GraphQL in-memory to query the database in the same process that's creating the GraphQL query. You should be treating GraphQL as a database, and it should not exist on the same machine that's using it. This way your GraphQL app has centralized permissions & auth, and all your other apps would then be beholden to whatever you implemented.

> just using a GraphQL server as an ORM

If you're using it the way above, then yes. But that's the wrong way to use it.

Well, Postgraphile is offering you a shortcut that comes with limitations.

A more complete approach would be to structure your application in a more typical fashion, and put a GraphQL layer on top. Have a data access layer that maps from our back end sources (databases/REST/RPC services) to GraphQL types. Then have a logic/authorization layer, with GraphQL on top. Using Postgrapile seems to take those application layers away for the sake of convenience.

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