Public GraphQL APIs Tobias Meixner, Co-Founder & CTO of BRIKL BV

1. Public
GraphQL
APIs
Tobias Meixner, Co-Founder & CTO @ BRIKL
APIdaysParis11December2019

2. Agenda
PUBLIC APIS GRAPHQL CHALLENGES OPPORTUNITIES

3. Open
API
SHARED FREELY /
PUBLISHED
Public
API
PUBLIC FOR USE

4. Public APIs
Publically accessible API for anyone but
usable only for certain users after
identification/authentication
IN THIS TALK

5. API Scope
INTERNAL SCHEMA
SHOULD EXTEND FROM
YOUR PUBLIC SCHEMA
PublicPreviewInternal
How to build and maintain?
Listen next to Aurélien David

6. GraphQL

7. +
CLIENTS CAN DEFINE DATA
THEY WANT
-
CLIENTS CAN DEFINE DATA
THEY WANT
USERS ARE HAPPY
OPS TEAM
MAYBE NOT HAPPY?

9. More clients & users
EXTERNAL USERS
Unpredictable
INTERNAL USERS
Predictable results and usage
Whitelisting, Persisted Queries
?

10. Public GraphQL API
Examples

11. Challenges

12. Mutations are a pain.
ANONYMUS GRAPHQL API USER

13. GraphQL
Clients
Use wrapper or CLIs to abstract away
GraphQL from your users e.g. for
server-to-server communication
ABSTRACT GRAPHQL

14. Caching
Since we don't know what we can expect in
terms of query rate, size and complexity
caching has new challenges
UNPREDICTABLE USAGE

15. Control usage
REST APIs are more predictable with
resource-based calls in GraphQL you
unlikely to predict client behaviour
BEYOND NUMBER OF CALLS

16. Conventions
As new technology GraphQL has no
common standard or too many best
practises how to write good public APIs
e.g. naming
NO COMMON STANDARD

17. How to expose
3rd party data
Can be the same as in REST being part of
your service being exposed through your
API but can be actually interesting to do
NOT ONLY A CHALLENGE

18. Opportunities

19. Developer experience
GraphQL empowers frontend developers
but so does it empower your external or
partner service developers
EMPOWER DEVELOPERS
- Discovery
- Headless X, Y, Z

20. Tracing & Insights
Abilities to get:
- usage patterns
- performance metrics
- privacy controls / logging
INSIGHT DOWN TO FIELD
LEVEL AND FIELD
COMBINATION

21. Over-fetching
API INTEGRATIONS CAN
BENEFIT FROM GRAPHQL
BUT ARE BEHIND DUE TO
THE CURRENT
ECOSYSTEM/APPROACHES
E. G. WEBHOOKS

22. Monetization
API aggregation is a new business model /
opportunity
EXPOSE 1 SINGLE API FOR
ALL SERVICES INCL.
EXTERNAL INTEGRATIONS

23. Example
Try at:
https://www.onegraph.com/graphiql
API INTEGRATION (MERGE)

24. More info
productionreadygraphql.com or fol l ow Marc-André Gi roux
Try out Gi thub or Shopi fy GraphQL API s
Ask your frontend developers or business

25. Thank you!
Questions?
See you in
Shenzhen or Bangkok
www.brikl.com@meixnertobias