It's common to hear GraphQL described as a REST killer. Here to slash your REST services, to end your endpoints. But today, let's not focus on conflict. Let's consider where GraphQL and REST share something in common: HTTP requests.
We all love type systems, or at least, most of us can agree that type systems are generally good. They can help us eliminate bugs. They provide a formal structure which makes it possible incorporate tooling and automation. They give us a way to communicate about the structure of our code. So if type systems are good, then you should be in love with GraphQL. GraphQL is a type system for your API.
Every language has rules. This is true for spoken languages as well as software languages. The English language has a large document of its rules: the dictionary. It defines all of the words that can be used. It provides examples of how to use each word. For the most part, we all agree upon these rules when we speak with one another.
There are a lot of reasons to move from REST to GraphQL. You might have read plenty of articles and watched plenty of presentations about all of the reasons to adopt GraphQL. If not, here is a short list of reading to get you obsessed with the need to migrate to GraphQL:
One of my favorite memories of 2018 was hiking the Lost Coast Trail. A few days of backpacking took us up the rugged California coastline to watch incredible sunsets, take pictures of seals, and eat food out of a bag. The drive to the trailhead took about six hours and barely used a major highway. As the winding two lane roads drew lines between small towns across the state, I realized that I wasn’t just traversing the state of California. Oh no… I was away from work, but once again, I was traversing a graph.
