This tutorial is part two of a four part series, which aims to take you from scratch to deploying a fully functional full stack application.
- Part 1: How to build blazing fast REST APIs with Node.js, MongoDB, Fastify and Swagger
- Part 2: How to build a blazing fast GraphQL API with Node.js, MongoDB, Fastify and GraphQL! (You are here.)
- Part 3: Coupling Vue.js with a GraphQL API.
- Part 4: Deploying a GraphQL API and Vue.js frontend application.
The first part of the series is available here and the source code for the application can be found here.
In this part we will revisit the models, controllers and routes from part one and then integrate GraphQL into the application. As a bonus we will also use Faker.js to create some fake data and seed the database.
Introduction:
GraphQL is a query language for APIs and a runtime for fulfilling those queries with your existing data.
Every GraphQL query goes through three phases: the queries are parsed, validated and executed.
GraphQL provides a complete and understandable description of the data in your API, gives clients the power to ask for exactly what they need, makes it easier to evolve APIs over time, and enables powerful developer tools. Learn More.
Prerequisites…
If you have completed the first part of this series, you should be up to speed with beginner/intermediate JavaScript knowledge, Node.js, Fastify.JS and MongoDB (Mongoose).
To follow along, you will need to complete part one of this series or grab the code from Git, although I would highly recommend at least skimming through part one.
Let’s get started!
Clone the repo for part one (skip this step if you followed part one and you are continuing with your own code) by opening your terminal, navigating to your project directory and executing each of the following lines of code:
git clone https://github.com/siegfriedgrimbeek/fastify-api.git
cd fastify-api
So now that we have a copy of the codebase we will update our packages and package.json
file by running the following code:
sudo npm i -g npm-check-updates
ncu -u
npm install
First we globally install the npm package “npm-check-updates” and then we use this package to automatically update our package.json
file with the latest package versions and then we install/update all our npm modules by running npm install
.
This is done to ensure that everyone completing the tutorial is working with the same package versions.
Refactor our server and start the app!
As with all software solutions, as the solution grows, developers often need to revisit and refactor the code.
In the src
directory we will create a new file called server.js
:
cd src
touch server.js
Add the following code code to the server.js
file:
We have now extracted the logic that starts the server to the server.js
file, allowing us to reuse this code throughout the project.
Next we need to update our index.js
file in the src
directory:
We will revisit the index.js
file, once we setup and configure GraphQL.
Start the Fastify server by running the following code in your terminal:
npm start
Note that there is no default route setup so for now, navigating to http://localhost:3000/ will result in the server returning a 404 error which is correct.
Start MongoDB and update the models
Let’s extend the existing model to also include Services and Owners. The below diagram below demonstrates the relationships between the collections:
- One car can have one owner.
- One owner can have many cars.
- One car can have many services.
Revisit the Car.js
file in the models
directory and update it as follows:
Create two new files in the models
directory, Owner.js
and Service.js
and add the following code to the files respectively:
Owner.js
Service.js
// External Dependancies
const mongoose = require("mongoose")
const ObjectId = mongoose.Schema.Types.ObjectId
const serviceSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
car_id: ObjectId,
name: String,
date: String
})
module.exports = mongoose.model("Service", serviceSchema)
view rawService.js hosted with ❤ by GitHub
There are no new concepts used in the above code. We have just created standard Mongoose Schemas, as with the Car.js
model.
Revisit the Car Controller and create the additional controllers
There are some slight changes to the carController.js
so navigate to the controllers
directory and update your file as per below:
Create two new files in the controllers
directory, serviceController.js
and ownerController.js
, and add the following code to the files respectively:
serviceController.js
ownerController.js
The biggest change to the controllers is how we get the parameters:
const id = req.params === undefined ? req.id : req.params.id
const updateData = req.params === undefined ? req : req.params
The above code is called a “conditional (ternary) operator” and is used as shorthand for the following if statement:
let id
if (req.params === undefined) {
id = req.id
} else {
id = req.params.id
}
We are using the ternary operator to accommodate requests from both the REST API and the GraphQL API, as they have a slightly different implementation.
Time to seed the database with some fake data!
In the src
directory let’s create a new directory and file by running the following code:
mkdir helpers
touch seed.js
Add the following code to the seed.js
file:
Let’s break down this mountain of code:
First we import two external libraries, Faker.js which is used to generate fake data and Boom, which is used to throw http friendly error objects.
Then we import the server.js
file which will spin up an instance of our server allowing us to interact with the models.
We then declare two arrays with fake data, cars
and serviceGarages
.
Then we import the models
and declare three functions (generateOwnerData
, generateCarData
, generateServiceData
) which each return an array of objects with the owner, car and service data respectively.
Once the Fastify.js instance is ready we use the Mongoose insertMany()
function to insert the generated arrays into the database. The function then returns an array of objects containing the original object data and ids
of the each record.
We use the JavaScript Map function to create an array of ids
owners and cars arrays. We use the ownersIDs
array for when generating car data and we use the carsIds
array when generating service data, they are passed into the respective functions and then values are randomly selected from them.
Lastly we need to install the Faker.js package and add the seed task to our package.json
file.
We can add the Faker.js package by navigating to the root directory and running the following code:
npm i faker -D
We then add the following to the package.json
file:
...
"scripts": {
...
"seed": "node ./src/helpers/seed.js"
},
...
That’s it! We can now run our seeding script from the project root directory with the following code:
npm run seed
If you are using MongoDB Compass (you should), you will see the data in your database:
GraphQL installation, setup and testing
Let’s get started by navigating to the root directory and running the following code:
npm i fastify-gql graphql
The above installs GraphQL and the Fastify barebone GraphQL adapter.
Navigate to the src
directory and run the following code:
mkdir schema
cd shema
touch index.js
Navigate to the src
directory update the index.js
file with the following:
// Import Server
const fastify = require('./server.js')
// Import external dependancies
const gql = require('fastify-gql')
// Import GraphQL Schema
const schema = require('./schema')
// Register Fastify GraphQL
fastify.register(gql, {
schema,
graphiql: true
})
... end here
// Import Routes
const routes = require('./routes')
With the above code we require the Fastify GraphQL Adapter, import the schema and register the GraphQl Adapter with Fastify.
We register the schema and enable GraphiQL, an in-browser IDE for exploring GraphQL.
Navigate to the schema
directory and open the index.js
file and add the following boilerplate code:
Let’s run through the above code:
We require the main GraphQL package and use JavaScript Destructuring to get the necessary GraphQL functions(GraphQLSchema
, GraphQLObjectType
, GraphQLString
, GraphQLInt
, GraphQLID
, GraphQLList
and GraphQLNonNull
).
We import our three controllers
(carController
, ownerController
and serviceController
).
We declare the carType
, ownerType
and serviceType
GraphQL Object Types, which are functions that accept an object as a parameter, with a name
and a fields
key.
These functions are used to define our GraphQL schema, similar to the Mongoose models defined earlier.
The fields can return a particular type, and methods that take arguments. Learn More about Object Types.
Then we declare the RootQuery
which is also a GraphQL Object Type and is found at the top level of every GraphQL server. It represents all of the possible entry points into the GraphQL API. Learn More about root fields and resolvers.
We then declare our Mutations
, which are used to change data. Although any query could be implemented to change data, operations that cause changes should be sent explicitly via a mutation. Learn More about Mutations.
Lastly we export the GraphQLSchema.
Now that we have our template setup we can start populating the Object Types, Root Query and Mutations.
Note that there are Mongoose to GraphQL schema generators available, but for the tutorial purposes we will manually create the schema.
Let’s update the carType
Object Type as follows:
Let’s dive deeper into the GraphQL functions, starting with the Scalars types in GraphQL:
GraphQL comes with a set of default scalar types out of the box:
Int
: A signed 32‐bit integer.GraphQLInt
Float
: A signed double-precision floating-point value.GraphQLFloat
String
: A UTF‐8 character sequence.GraphQLString
Boolean
:true
orfalse
.GraphQLBoolean
ID
: The ID scalar type represents a unique identifier, often used to refetch an object or as the key for a cache. The ID type is serialised in the same way as a String; however, defining it as anID
signifies that it is not intended to be human‐readable.GraphQLID
The owner
and service
fields are where it gets interesting. These fields are not defined as Scalar types like the rest — instead, their type
is referencing the ownerType
and serviceType
that we have created and are yet to populate.
The second argument that we pass into the owner
and service
fields are resolver functions.
Resolver functions or methods are functions that resolves a value for a type or field in a schema
Resolvers can be asynchronous too! They can resolve values from another REST API, database, cache, constant, etc.
You can think of each field in a GraphQL query as a function or method of the previous type which returns the next type. In fact, this is exactly how GraphQL works. Each field on each type is backed by a function called the resolver which is provided by the GraphQL server developer. When a field is executed, the corresponding resolver is called to produce the next value.
If a field produces a scalar value like a string or number, then the execution completes. However if a field produces an object value then the query will contain another selection of fields which apply to that object. This continues until scalar values are reached. GraphQL queries always end at scalar values.
In order to create the relationship between the different types we pass the _id
and the owner_id
values into the respective controller functions.
So essentially we are requesting the owner details along with the car details:
return await userController.getSingleOwner({ id: parent.owner_id })
and the details of all the services related to the car:
return await serviceController.getCarsServices({ id: parent._id })
To return a list or array from with GraphQL, we use the GraphQLList
. Here is a great in depth tutorial about using arrays in GraphQL Schema, but it is really simple: whenever we need an array we will use the GraphQLList
function.
Let’s update the ownerType
and serviceType
with the following code:
ownerType
serviceType
The above two Object Types are very similar to the carType
. You can notice a pattern between the different Object Types and their relationships.
We can now populate the RootQuery
root with the following code:
There are no new concepts in the above code, but keep in mind that the RootQuery
query is the entry point to all queries on the GraphQL API. So from the above we can see that we can run the following queries directly:
- Get all the Cars
- Get a single Car
- Get a single Owner
- Get a single Service
Let’s open the GraphiQL user interface and build some queries: http://localhost:3000/graphiql.html
Queries are entered on the left, results are in the middle, and the documentation explorer is on the right.
The documentation explorer can be used to explore the entire graph down to Scalar level. This is very helpful when building queries.
The language used to build the queries resembles JSON. This cheat sheet is a great a reference.
Below demonstrates why GraphQL is so awesome:
In the above example, we are using the cars
root query to display a list of all the cars, their owners, and their services.
We have one final topic to address, and that is mutations
. Let’s update the mutations
with the following code:
As before, we declare our Object Type, specify the name and the fields.
A mutation consists of the the type, args and the async resolve function. The resolve function passes the args to the controller, which returns the result of the mutation.
You have now coded a fully functional REST API and a fully functional GraphQL API.
There are no rules stating that one should use exclusively REST or exclusively GraphQL. In some projects, the best solution may be a mix of both. This is really determined on a project-to-project basis.
You can download the source code form Git here.
What is Next?
In the next tutorial, we will consume our GraphQL API with a Vue.js frontend as a single page application!