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Comment by fc373745 | Hacker News Reader

no, what im saying is graphql is introducing something they think is novel, when it already can be done in REST.

it's not hard.

In my specific case, using Flask-Marshmallow i can do this

```

    some_resource = Resource.find_by_id(resource_id)

    arg = request.args.get('type_of_resource')

    if arg == 'with_commments':

        return full_resource_schema.dump(some_resource), 200

    if arg == 'no_comments':

        return no_comments_schema.dump(some_resource), 200

```

there i just implemented graphql in 6 lines of code

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The whole point of graphQL is to allow FE teams to decide what information they need in an organizationally decoupled fashion, you haven't done that at all. Suppose FE wants another join on that object, now they must wait for you to push more code enabling those queries.

Unfortunately for graphql, the claim that backend teams need to be constantly making endpoints for other decoupled teams is not as drastic and critical as you consider it to be.

Dare i even say switching to graphql and onboarding developers to graphql is a much more resource intensive process than adding another endpoint (or a couple).

> onboarding developers to graphql is a much more resource intensive process

As a BE/remote I basically taught myself most of elixir's graphQL framework in a day (wait, that was yesterday), while under feature pressure (due this afternoon), mostly by poking around and doing a bit of TDD. There are parts that I really hate about graphQL, but overall I consider it a win.

The problem with GraphQL is on the front end. Suddenly, the FE team becomes responsible for understanding the entire data model, which resources can be joined together, by what keys, and what is actually performant vs what isn't.

Instead of doing a simple GET /a/b/1/c and presenting that data structure, they now need to define a query, think about what resources to pull into that query etc. If the query ends up being slow, they have to understand why and work on more complex changes than simply asking the BE team for a smaller response with a few query params.

that's an interesting point! And the graphql basically obscures a mental model over a broad abstraction, so it's impossible to know exactly what's going on without going through and actually reading the BE code itself. Thanks for the perspective.

I hit this problem when contemplating exposing the API of the application I work on to customers, to be used in their automation scripts.

We quickly realized that expecting them to learn our data model and how to use it efficiently would be much more complicated than exposing every plausible use-case explicitly. We could do this on the "API front-end" by building a set of high-level utilities that would embed the GraphQL queries, but that would essentially double much of the work being done in the front-end (and more than double if some customers want to use Python scripting while others want JS and others want TCL or Perl).

So, we decided that the best place to expose those high-level abstractions is exactly the REST API, where it is maximally re-usable.

also, to add another point.

Most API teams will give you all the resources that you need.

It is most likely the case that the FE team will ask not for more, but rather, for less.

This was the exact problem why GraphQl was created in the first place - to account for Facebook's mobile platform, because they were receiving way too much data that needed to be trimmed because they didn't want to be sending like 500kb of json over mobile networks.

Competent API teams will give you all the resources that you need to be productive as a FE engineer, and if it is the case that your data needs some trimming, then go ahead and ask your decoupled backend team, while you can go ahead and keep working asynchronously while they get that done for you.

Not Fatal as you think it is.

Unless I’m missing something, the response schema will have an optional “comments” field whether the “with_comments” arg is passed or not.

it's just a hit to the db.

Graphql works the same way if i'm not mistaken.

and if its the case that you don't want the comments at all, then in the conditionals write your sql statements

if you want comments

select * from resource where id=some resource id

if you don't

select without comments from resource where id=some resource id

there's no need to get into specifics, the point is graphql is not bringing anything novel. everything it claims to do can be implemented in RESt if you're willing to implement it.

I’m talking about the GraphQL or OAS schema.

With a REST API, the “resource” type will always have an optional “comments” field, whatever the value of arg is.

With a GraphQL API you’ll have the right type depending on your query.

Yep. OpenAPI spec is not rich enough to represent relations like this so its rubbish for FE dev to use to generate models/api client.

In general, the tooling/spec has thousands of open bugs, isnt going anywhere, moves very slowly and is missing fundamental features.

https://github.com/OAI/OpenAPI-Specification/issues/1998 heres the ticket where it will inevitably be ignored and die. But even if it was supported in the spec, the open source generators wont support it anyways.

Said generators also uses "logic less" templates to generate something that very much needs logic. As a FE dev, I love nothing more than to fork a an archaic Java based generator to get the client gen working...not.

If you truly care about that, the truly REST solution would be to define separate MediaTypes and use Accepts headers to specify which MediaType is desired.

So if you wanted comments you would send a request with a header like "Accept: application/resource_with_comments", and you'd send a Header like "Accept: application/resource_without_comments".

The thing is, few people want this level of control in practice. This would generally lead to a huge proliferation of types for very little practical benefit. Much simpler to have a set of well-defined types with optional fields than to define a new type for each combination of fields used today.

What would you do if someone wanted:

- some fields of the resource - some fields of the comments - some fields of the user that made the comments

It depends on performance requirements. Either ask them to retrieve the entire objects, or expose a new endpoint to retrieve the filtered list in an optimal way.

API consumers definitely aren't the ones who should be thinking about something like joining behavior, since GraphQL doesn't give nearly enough control to achieve performant joining.

Basic filtering can also be easily achieved with ad-hoc methods, such as query params. No need for a full-blown GraphQL language server in front of all your services.

No need for it, from your perspective, sure. It totally solves a lot of shortcomings your API is forcing on its consumers though.

In general, my consumers don't want to learn my API. If they find shortcomings, they don't want to work around them by learning to query my bad models, they will call and complain that my model is bad and that I have to fix it in the next version or they'll look elsewhere.

At least, this has been our experience with B2B software sales.

Of course, YMMV depending on market etc.

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