Build realtime GraphQL backends with Grafbase

This article was published on Tuesday, January 17, 2023 by Jamie Barton @ The Guild Blog

The Guild has made working with realtime
GraphQL Subscriptions and Live Queries
easy over the last few years thanks to plugins that work out of the box with
GraphQL Yoga.

However, there are developers who don't want the hassle of building a backend, managing deployments,
configuring continuous integration, juggling connection pooling, and more. Thankfully, there are
solutions designed to abstract all the hard work.

Grafbase was built to manage all of the above. You get a distributed GraphQL
API at the edge by creating a single grafbase/schema.graphql file in your project.

Your schema contains models with special directives to relate data, set default values, validation,
and more.

# grafbase/schema.graphql

type Post @model {
  title: String!
  slug: String! @unique
}

In 2021, Laurin Quast introduced a collection of packages to support
the use of GraphQL Live Queries on the server and client.

Today, Grafbase is happy to announce it now supports GraphQL Live Queries!

This means that all you need to do to start using GraphQL Live Queries is add @live to your query!

query @live {
  postCollection(first: 10) {
    edges {
      node {
        id
        title
      }
    }
  }
}

The @live directive will observe any changes to the data and send a message using
Server-Sent Events with the
patch to update the current query state.

The event is in the format of
JSON Patch:

{
  "patch": [
    {
      "op": "add",
      "path": "/postCollection/edges/3",
      "value": {
        "node": {
          "id": "post_01GJMDWJ2M6WWTM26S7C1KKYBE",
          "title": "Instant serverless GraphQL backends"
        }
      }
    }
  ],
  "revision": 1
}

Together with The Guild, Grafbase is also releasing 2 new packages (with more on the way) to further
abstract the effort needed to implement Live Queries on the frontend.

Starting with support for Apollo Client and
URQL, you can add Live Queries with the following
packages:

• @grafbase/apollo-link
• @grafbase/urql-exchange

Developers not using either of those libraries can still use Live Queries with the native
EventSource API.

Try It Now!

You can try Live Queries by building your own backend in one simple command:

npx grafbase init

Once you've modelled your data using the schema you can
run your backend locally to build:

npx grafbase dev

About Grafbase

Grafbase is the easiest way to build and deploy GraphQL backends. Go from idea to production in
seconds, without spending time on infrastructure.

• Build backends with GraphQL SDL as configuration
• Spin up instant preview environments with every PR
• Build locally with the CLI — npx grafbase dev
• Deployed to the edge with no cold starts
• Add granular permissions for users (and groups)
• Build collaborative multiplayer apps faster with Live Queries