Apollo GraphQL, the pioneer in the use of GraphQL API technologies for modern application development, today announced the general availability of Development Graphs – a free cloud offering that allows developers around the world to access Apollo’s powerful Studio tools, such as Apollo Explorer, with any server.
GraphQL, a query-language-based API technology, has emerged as a true developer megatrend, offering a modern and powerful alternative to decades-old API technologies such as REST. Development Graphs accelerate the benefits of GraphQL by giving developers free and unlimited access to Apollo Studio’s Explorer and Schema tools, without requiring any additional setup in code. These tools provide several benefits to GraphQL developers. They increase developer productivity by providing powerful tools for query writing. They increase the discoverability of what’s in the data graph by providing advanced ways to browse and search GraphQL schema. They increase the general accessibility of the graph to your organization, by making data queryable even to team members who are not developers.
“At Apollo we are dedicated to helping developers be as productive as possible and to make development accessible to as many people as possible,” said Geoff Schmidt, co-founder and CEO of Apollo GraphQL. “Over the past couple of years, we have developed powerful tools in our Studio suite for developers using GraphQL. With today’s announcement, we have gone a step further and made those tools widely available to all developers for free, regardless of which GraphQL server they use, allowing them to ship high-quality, consistent digital experiences across all platforms their customers use”
With Development Graphs, the Apollo Studio developer tools are now available to every developer in the world to use with any GraphQL server.
Development Graphs are a convenient tool for connecting local servers or any development environment to Apollo Studio by updating a user’s schema in real-time and providing a private sandbox. The developer tools that comprise Apollo Studio, especially Explorer, simplify the process of building and executing queries against running servers, including a point-and-click interface for exploring schemas and tools that ease and accelerate the process of authoring and running live queries.
Explorer is a full query writing IDE that is designed to help developers become more productive when working with GraphQL. Features of Explorer include:
- Editor tools – Everything developers need to be successful writing queries. Full autocomplete support, schema hints on hover, command-click to open docs, helpers to extract variables and fragments, and more.
- Point-and-click query building – The ability to build powerful queries without knowledge of GraphQL syntax or the shape of a schema. Users can copy links to share their queries with other users to copy a version of the query that can be run in the terminal as a CURL command.
- Schema search – Search for types and fields in your schema, without needing to know exactly what it is you’re looking for or where to find it. Explorer’s search will guide you through identifying a path to query any field in your schema. Find and add fields in a large graph to your query without needing to know in advance where they are.
- Inlined hints – Choose to see samples of response data inlined in your editor to get a sense of what data will be returned by your query, or samples of the response latency for each field in your query to get a sense of overall query cost.
- Mock responses – Test operations even if your underlying server is not yet ready to serve data for a particular schema shape.
- Display modes – View the response data from your queries as JSON or as tables (sortable). Download your response data to JSON and CSV files.
- Inlined traces – Request and view traces for every query you send from the Explorer and view them alongside the data that was returned.
For a more in-depth look at Apollo Studio and Development Graphs, see here.
About Apollo GraphQL
Apollo GraphQL, the most widespread implementation of GraphQL, is focused on making application development easier, better, and faster. Apollo builds open source tools and commercial services used by thousands of developers in production and has cultivated a strong community around GraphQL. With the Apollo Data Graph Platform, customers like Expedia, Airbnb, Audi, SurveyMonkey, and others rapidly implement GraphQL, consistent with industry best practices, providing their customers with the high-quality, personalized digital experiences they expect—on all of their devices. Based in San Francisco, Apollo is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Matrix Partners, and Trinity Ventures.
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