Migrating to GraphQL: A Practical Assessment

GraphQL is a novel query language proposed by Facebook to implement Web-based APIs. In this paper, we present a practical study on migrating API clients to this new technology. First, we conduct a grey literature review to gain an in-depth understanding on the benefits and key characteristics normal...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in2019 IEEE 26th International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER) pp. 140 - 150
Main Authors Brito, Gleison, Mombach, Thais, Valente, Marco Tulio
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.02.2019
Subjects
APIs
Bibliographies
Blogs
Computer hacking
Database languages
GraphQL
Migration Study
REST
Servers
Uniform resource locators
Online AccessGet full text
DOI10.1109/SANER.2019.8667986

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Summary:GraphQL is a novel query language proposed by Facebook to implement Web-based APIs. In this paper, we present a practical study on migrating API clients to this new technology. First, we conduct a grey literature review to gain an in-depth understanding on the benefits and key characteristics normally associated to GraphQL by practitioners. After that, we assess such benefits in practice, by migrating seven systems to use GraphQL, instead of standard REST-based APIs. As our key result, we show that GraphQL can reduce the size of the JSON documents returned by REST APIs in 94% (in number of fields) and in 99% (in number of bytes), both median results.
DOI:10.1109/SANER.2019.8667986