JrGQL, a GraphQL alternative
I still can&#x27;t quite figure out the value of any of these schemes.<p>Yes, APIs seldom elegantly encode into the set of HTTP verbs and responses that we associate with a &quot;RESTful&quot; design, I grant. And so maybe we can come up with better.<p>But the notion of JrGQL and GQL as <i>query languages</i> means that the servers handling these calls must be <i>query resolvers</i>. Unlike most restful interfaces which tend to devote a single uniform interface per endpoint with only minor modifications, a full query model of your domain means an explosive quantity of potential strategies piped through a single endpoint.<p>I&#x27;ve used Python, Ruby, Node (in ts and js) and Haskell to service GQL queries and in all cases it&#x27;s not trivial.<p>The popular NodeJS bindings tend to cause huge overfetching because each field tends to have a unique resolver but there is no rule about combining them. The pooular Python bindings (graphene) let you merge this, but the programming model to handle the arguments and sub-arguments is very frustrating as in different places, different soirces of logic will government what gets fetched (sub objects use SqlAlchemy, but outer objects with ANY sorry of query logic need to be custom). Ruby&#x27;s bindings are the same.<p>Haskell&#x27;s popular solution let&#x27;s you cobble a responder from a proof of concept, and it leads to optimal query scheduling. Still not the best: it&#x27;s by no means complete and requires quite a lot of work to set up.<p>These GQL systems push a huge burden onto every api endpoint with the proposed trade-off: &quot;Well now the client has an easier time.&quot; Even if that&#x27;s true, now the backend needs to be much, much smarter than before to give a marginally better interface for clients.<p>I&#x27;m still very skeptical of this whole concept.