GraphQL + REST: A Fair Juxtaposition

An exploration of GraphQL through the lens of someone who loves REST. Intended as a response to the “GraphQL vs REST” blog posts that often misrepresent REST. Details below.

Food and drinks will be provided. First 15 minutes will be eating, socializing and settling in.

Read about our meetup format here (https://bit.ly/2TI8q3C).

[Additional Info About Talk]
GraphQL appears to be growing in popularity and the web is full of blogs touting its benefits over REST. Unfortunately the tone and content of these comparisons can sometimes give the impression that many of the benefits provided by GraphQL are somehow not achievable with REST, which is not remotely true.

This talk will be about GraphQL as presented through the lens of someone who actually loves REST, and has been building and consuming REST APIs for years.

Over the course of the talk we’ll explore some of the comparison points, including why “over fetching” (returning only the resource fields the client needs) is a solution to a largely non-existent problem, and also why the downsides of “under fetching” (making extra network requests for nested resources) are blown way out of proportion in practice.

We’ll also discuss some of the performance and security concerns that GraphQL opens up, along with why the way GraphQL behaves present a problem when trying to gain insights from tools and services designed around error reporting and analytics.

We’ll also explore some of the tooling for building and consuming each type of endpoint, which is one thing GraphQL does have over vanilla REST, especially when considering the “getting started” experience for beginners.

Whereas GraphQL specifies exactly what an API should look like and how it should behave, which can make it easier to “get it right” the first time, REST has no formal standard about what endpoints should look like, which can make it difficult for a beginning web developer to know how to construct a flexible REST API. But this largely only manifests when building one yourself from libraries. Anyone who has used a framework like Sails, Rails, or ASP.NET MVC, will see conventions the community has largely adopted which make them very easy to build and consume.

Finally we’ll explore some of libraries used for consuming both types of endpoints, as a way to explore how the consumption impacts the front-end developer experience.

[Spin-offs Meetups]
Discuss them! See if anyone is interested!

[Directions]
Getting to the meetup by car: Pioneer is in downtown Tucson, so if you are not biking, taking the bus, streetcar, or dirigible you are probably coming by automobile. Downtown street parking in metered spots is free after 5pm, but may be limited.

Your best bet may be the Pennington Street Garage (110 E Pennington St). Check out the city’s parking guide (https://www.tucsonaz.gov/park-tucson/where-can-i-park-downtown) for more info.