Inder from lightspeedevNo matter how much people criticize Facebook for various reasons, one thing worth noting is its significant contributions to the open-source community, whether through React, LLaMA, or GraphQL.
In this blog, we’ll explore one such tool that Facebook developed internally in 2012 and then open-sourced for the world to use in 2015: GraphQL.
GraphQL, which stands for Graph Query Language, transformed the way APIs were queried, simplifying processes that often became chaotic as the load of information increased..
When learning something new, I love using the Feynman technique — I’ll write a simple blog about what it is and how you can use it, but for now, we’ll apply it to understand what GraphQL is and why it exists.
Let’s take some examples:
Reading Data: When you open Instagram, your device pings the backend and says, “Hey, I want to read the changes or posts that were made while I was away.” At its core, this is a read operation.
Creating Data: When you post something on Instagram, the frontend sends a POST request to the backend to insert something new.
Updating Data: If you want to update the caption of an already posted image, it becomes an update request.
Deleting Data: Deleting a post is, of course, a delete request.
And that’s the basic function of APIs — they simplify communication and handle tasks that are mostly:
C — Create
R — Read
U — Update
D — Delete
This is essentially what REST APIs do. These are endpoints that, when pinged, perform CRUD operations and sometimes handle more complex tasks.
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