About GraphQL
GraphQL is a new API technology that solves some of REST’s key limitations — such as slowness caused by multiple API calls, and poor developer experience because there’s no schema or type system to describe the API’s capabilities. Open sourced by Facebook in 2015, GraphQL is now a rapidly growing API standard used by companies like Twitter and Github. These companies want to enable a more mature, enterprise-level approach to API development than that provided by REST.
We believe GraphQL is the best API technology for exposing Lumar’s power to developers. It offers significant advantages over REST, especially when working with complex data models:
- Fetch all the data you need in one call by following references to related resources. No more separate calls per resource.
- Specify exactly the fields you want, eliminating any bulky, unwanted data.
- Improve your architectural design and testing with the help of a schema and type system.
- Integrate advanced developer tools into your editor. You get time-saving features like auto-complete and integrated documentation.
GraphQL is becoming the standard for rich data applications, giving teams the most modern, flexible, and rapid development experience. We’ve adopted it for our own front end, speeding up and improving our development process. We’re excited to make the same benefits available to other developers, and can’t wait to see what you build!
The power of Lumar + GraphQL
Lumar generates extremely rich data through its analysis of your web site. GraphQL lets you query your data much more powerfully and simply than REST. Follow deeply nested references to retrieve complex data in one call.
[GraphQL] [REST]
GraphQL is schema driven and strongly typed. You can integrate auto-completion tools like GraphiQL to speed up development. Quickly locate the tables and variables you need to fetch data from your reports.
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At Lumar, we use our GraphQL API to drive robust, agile, loosely coupled development. GraphQL’s single endpoint design and regular, predictable syntax eliminates coupling between API route design and user interface structure. Using leading-edge front end frameworks like REACT, you can quickly build rich user interfaces, and change them easily.
(REACT + GraphQL)