AzureFunBytes is a weekly opportunity to learn more about the fundamentals and foundations that make up Azure. It's a chance for me to understand more about what people across the Azure organization do and how they do it. Every week we get together at 11 AM Pacific on Microsoft LearnTV and learn more about Azure.

The internet is driven by APIs. Software is able to be queried, interconnected, and presented to you thanks to APIs. This week on AzureFunBytes we'll focus on using GraphQL. GraphQL is a query language and server-side runtime for APIs that allows you to reduce the "over-fetching" problem of querying data. GraphQL provides a way to pull data from a number of data sources with only one call to your API.

From the GraphQL website:

GraphQL is a query language for APIs and a runtime for fulfilling those queries with your existing data. GraphQL provides a complete and understandable description of the data in your API, gives clients the power to ask for exactly what they need and nothing more, makes it easier to evolve APIs over time, and enables powerful developer tools.

Let's say you're working with an app that requires four different points of data in order to present information to your customers. In a REST API you'd need to make four different calls to this API. In the case of GraphQL, you can make a single call to the GraphQL service to access all four of those data points.

To help me understand more about GraphQL, I have queried Hasura Developer Advocate Adron Hall for assistance. Adron comes with years of experience as a coder, a founder, a messenger, and someone who loves to recon what's new in software. You can find Adron on GitHub, Katacoda, Dev.to, and his own blog Composite Thrashing Code.

00:02:32 - Remembering Abel Wang
00:04:39 - Let's meet Adron
00:08:55 - Get to know GraphQL
00:13:37 - GraphiQL and VS Code Extension
00:18:20 - Hasura + Terraform + Azure
00:21:18 - Data mutation
00:28:04 - Working with data sources
00:50:11 - Starting a local GraphQL server

Adron has the following agenda for this week:

* GraphQL + Hasura - Origins.
* Hasura & Azure - How he can get started with that.
* Dev Workflow + CLI
* Migrations, Metadata, and Seeding
* Local + Prod Infrastructure as Code (i.e. terraform)

So check out this week's conversation on GraphQL!

Learn about Azure fundamentals with me!

Live stream is normally found on Twitch, YouTube, and LearnTV at 11 AM PT / 2 PM ET Thursday. You can also find the recordings here as well:

AzureFunBytes on Twitch
AzureFunBytes on YouTube
Azure DevOps YouTube Channel
Follow AzureFunBytes on Twitter

Useful Docs:

Get $200 in free Azure Credit
Microsoft Learn: Introduction to Azure fundamentals
GraphQL
Get started with GraphQL on Azure
Hasura
Hasura + Azure + Terraform: terrazura on GitHub
Build Scalable APIs using GraphQL and Serverless
Azure Functions
API Apps
Azure Tips and Tricks: How to use a GraphQL on Azure