Rendering is the heartbeat of a React application. When something changes (props, state), the component tree re-renders, reflecting that change in the user interface. But what happens when we need to do something after a render? As you might imagine, there's a Hook for that.
A little over a year ago, we needed to publish the GraphQL Workshop website and decided to use Netlify for hosting. Before we could deploy the site, I needed to set up the security certificate to enable HTTPS. Pre-Netlify, this used to take forever, so I carved out some time on the calendar. I then promptly found a one-click option to secure the site with HTTPS, and the whole thing was done automatically in around 37 seconds. Oh, and it was free.
A few months ago, we posted an article about how to fetch data from a GraphQL API. In it, we looked at the Snowtooth API, a fake ski resort with a real GraphQL API, and we were able to send queries to get data and send mutations to change data. We all had a great time.
It has been 8 years since we made the decision to build everything using JavaScript and Node.js. It was a good decision. It has been a lot of fun watching JavaScript, Node, and React explode in popularity. There are great opportunities out there for JavaScript professionals these days, and it is our mission to provide the training tools necessary to succeed in these positions.
Authorizing and authenticating users is an important part of building web applications. We need to know who the users are and what they are allowed to see. With a GraphQL app, how do we make sure that a user is allowed to see content? We need to authenticate them to make sure that we identify them. We also need to authorize them to prove that they have the right to access the application.
At the heart of any GraphQL project is a schema, a document that describes all of the types, queries, mutations, and subscriptions that are available on the API. In addition to these basic types, the GraphQL schema definition language provides us with a way to create an interface.
