GraphQL.org just got a makeover
Sashko Stubailo
The GraphQL community has been super hyped in the last few days after a truly landmark announcement — the first major public GraphQL API. And not just from anyone, from GitHub, one of the most important, developer-oriented API providers out there. While that’s a big piece of news for the wider developer community, and a lot of people will be hearing about GraphQL for the first time because of it, you shouldn’t miss another huge milestone:
GraphQL.org has been rewritten from the ground up, and GraphQL has been announced to be a stable, production ready platform!
For the last year, GraphQL has been a bit of a hidden gem — if you put in the effort to learn about it, you got hooked, but there wasn’t one place you could get a great summary of its benefits, an explanation of the technology, and comprehensive learning and “getting started” materials. Now there is!
Here are the five best parts of the new GraphQL.org website:
1. An engaging front page to get you excited
The front page of graphql.org now describes the main benefits of GraphQL, with incredible moving diagrams brought to you by Lee Byron, one of GraphQL’s primary maintainers. Apparently Lee is secretly a motion graphics designer.
Go to the front page to see the other benefits and animations.
2. An ever-growing list of companies on GraphQL
In the GraphQL community, you’ll never feel lonely. There are tons of companies using it already, and more getting interested every day.
Send a pull request to add your company to the list!
3. A complete, interactive reference about queries and schemas
In the past, you might have needed to read the official GraphQL specification to learn about some of the neat features GraphQL gives you. It’s great that the spec is relatively easy to read, but not everyone is into that format — it’s can be much better to learn through examples. Now you can do that right on graphql.org:
Get started playing with all of the features of GraphQL on the new Queries and Mutations and Schemas and Types walkthrough pages.
There’s also more in-depth information about validation, execution, introspection, and best practices!
4. Examples and links for a variety of GraphQL servers and clients
GraphQL was initially open-sourced by Facebook with a JavaScript reference implementation. Today, GraphQL is much more than just a JavaScript thing! Facebook uses it internally with Hack, GitHub and Shopify use it with Ruby, and there are implementations in almost every popular, server-side language.
Check out the all-new Code page to see all of the different examples.
5. A totally new community page to get involved and learn more
The GraphQL community is bigger than ever before, and now there’s a place where people can get together and share what they are up to — a community page. You can also go to the upcoming events page to learn about upcoming talks and conferences about GraphQL.
If you’re running a meetup or giving a talk somewhere, make sure to send a pull request to add it to the page!
It’s awesome that the GraphQL community now has such a great site to rally around, and a wonderful resource to introduce people to the technology. GraphQL.org launched almost exactly one year ago, let’s see where it goes in the next year!
Congratulations to everyone who worked on the site — Lee Byron, Kevin Lacker, Robert Zhu, Thea Lamkin, and others!
