The GraphQL buffer

Fri, 20 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The GraphQL gateway started as a practical problem. We had mobile apps, web clients, and a growing number of backend services. Every client talked to every backend directly. When a new backend came up or an old one changed its API, every client needed updating. The gateway was supposed to fix that – one schema, one endpoint, clients talk to GraphQL, GraphQL talks to backends.

We built it in Go, starting from a fork of graphql-go. The fork grew over time – custom resolvers, caching layers, request batching, things we needed that the upstream didn’t have. We’d sync the fork every few months, but our changes kept growing. Five of us on the team, and most of the early days went into getting other teams to migrate their APIs onto the gateway. We built the base, got teams to add and own their own modules, then moved into a gatekeeping role – reviewing what went in, making sure the schema stayed coherent.

Graphql on vnykmshr

The GraphQL buffer