Queries

A bit of GraphQL

Alambic is fully compliant with the facebook/graphql specification. A GraphQL query is a string interpreted by a server that returns data in a specified format.

Here is an example query we can make against our schema:

Give me the field “name” from the user with id “1”

{
  user(id: "1") {
    name
  }
}

The server should respond with:

{
  "data": {
    "user": {
      "name": "Luke"
    }
  }
}

Another more complex query:

Give me the list of users names along with their posts

{
  users {
    name
    posts {
      text
    }
  }
}

The server should respond with:

{
  "data": {
    "users": [
      {
        "name": "Luke",
        "posts": [
          {
            "text": "May the force be with you"
          }
        ]        
      },
      {
        "name": "Dark Vador",
        "posts": [
          {
            "text": "I am your father"
          }
        ]         
      }
    ]
  }
}

Create an HTTP endpoint

We’re almost finished. In order to query your Alambic server we now need to create an endpoint.

Alambic is “transport-agnostic”, meaning that we could grab data over HTTP like normal or request data via a non-HTTP wire protocol. For this example, we will simply expose our Alambic server over a single HTTP endpoint with a dead simple php script.

Create a alambic.php file at your website’s root directory

Congratulations! You’ve set up your first GraphQL Alambic server. You can now start sending requests to your server:

There’s plenty of resources to explore from now:

  • datasources to use real databases (MySQL, MongoDB, …) instead of json files
  • middlewares if you want to add application logic and cool features like caching, versionning,… and so more